Detour
by mysticxf
Summary: The Doctor never quite makes it where he intends, but when he crash lands on an odd planet with hungry wolves, savage men, and unexplainable gravity fluctuations, he really wishes he'd made it to see the setting sun he'd promised his companion.
1. A Trip Through the Forest

His feet can only carry him so fast and he feels like he's about to fall – the momentum too quick for his legs, unaccustomed to all of the running – and he does so with a breathless grunt, hitting the moist soil with a thud before flipping himself onto his backside, eyes surveying the terrain around him. Henry just wants to go home. He isn't even sure how they arrived on this planet, but he was certain that he would give anything to be back on the ship, heading for the mining colony. He'd rather be digging for a source of energy on K4-230-1 than stuck on this place.

Bringing himself back to his feet, he listens to the soft wind that flows through the trees. There's one sound in particular he's listening for. He hasn't heard it in a few hours, but he also hasn't stopped running. His lungs burn and he closes his eyes and presses a hand to his chest, wondering if this was what a heart attack felt like. His old man had gone out with one and he'd been warned that his dinners and beer would bring one on for him one day.

It always gave him a laugh.

"_Rather go out on a good steak than on a bowl of rabbit chow_!"

Now it didn't seem so funny.

He'd been lucky enough to survive the crash. Four others didn't and the beasts that set upon them the first night, devouring them where they lay, still strapped to their seats, weren't anything to be trifled with. They howled through the darkness, calling one another to a new meal and Henry always feared the howls would be close enough that he would understand the meal would be him.

"Henry?"

The voice that called out quietly belonged to Mariel and he involuntarily smiled before he turned to see her rushing towards him, long crimson hair flowing behind her like a curtain of fall leaves. They embraced, something they'd never thought of doing in the months they'd worked the mining shafts together – but it was welcome now, knowing they were both still alive.

"What happened?" Henry asked, rubbing the sweat off his thick neck. "Last I saw, you'd gone into the forest with Benny and Jupe… what happened?" He repeated.

She shook her head and her eyes were instantly wet with unshed tears. "They got Jupe first night, tore him right out of our camp. Benny broke his leg not long after, he begged me to leave him behind," her lips trembled as she shook her head, "God, Henry, I just left in there to die."

"He was as good as dead and he knew it," Henry assured her sadly. It was the only comfort he could offer before a long note pierced the air and they both turned towards it, blood cold in their veins.

They ran together then and Henry probably knew it was better that she not know what happened to the others – the ones that had been left with him. It was pure luck that he'd been the one to survive. Plenty of others much more fit than himself. He operated the lift, for Christ's sake. Did a few observations on the surface. No heavy work, nothing that would keep him in shape aside from the walks about to check the equipment and do head counts. But he'd been better at hiding.

Funny what it comes to in the end.

Henry looked forward to Mariel, watching her as she occasionally turned to make sure he was still at her heel and he slowed, shouting out, "Ship shouldn't be far from here Mari – if you get there, lock yourself in, work out a way to send out a distress signal. There's _gotta_ be some power left in that old boat. Tell 'em to blow this rock out of the sky."

It'd be his last farewell, his only good deed, and he could see by her bloodshot eyes that she understood. Beautiful woman with the brightest red hair, he thought to himself as he stopped running and grasped his knees with his palms, regaining his breath just in time to straighten and see the last wisps of hair disappear over a ridge. She'd been the first person he met on the job. The only one to shake his hand and meet his eye like an equal and not like he was the portly one they'd have to carry on their backs.

"_Don't let the bloke's get to you, Henry – they're good folk, just need warmin' up to is all_."

Perpetually hopeful. It was why he enjoyed calling her Mari. Reminded him of her merriness; the cheerful laughter at the dinner table and the soft voice that sang out late at night when they readied themselves for bed on the ship. They were long nights the last few, and he often wondered if it'd been better if they'd stayed in Cryo the last leg of the journey instead of waking. If they'd been in Cryo, they would all have perished in the crash – that was the part of the ship that was destroyed on impact.

"Jeremiah was a bullfrog," Henry sings out loudly horribly. "Was a good friend of mine." He raises his arms at his sides and closes his eyes to the sky, hearing the sound of feet padding over the foliage. "Never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine!"

He laughs to himself at the incredibly old song his grandfather used to sing to him and then looks out over the land, seeing the glowing yellow of their eyes as they slow to come near him. Henry feels his upper lip trembling with anger as his eyes spill over onto his cheeks, wetting them with the finality of the moment. They approach even slower, infuriating him, because he wants it to be over quickly. It would be vicious and it would be painful, but it would be over.

"COME ON!" He bellows, the words echoing through the trees. "Come on and get me," he adds in a whisper.

The overgrown wolves have ragged hair in greys and browns and long sharp teeth and they growl, pacing around one another until the first one leaps and lands on his chest with a rough thud that jars his heart. His shouts, increasingly pained and then silent, make their way over the dense forest and find Mariel's ears in a wave of sorrow that causes her to stumble. She hits the side of their ship with a deafening clang as parts of her suit collide with the metal and for a moment she's still, sobbing against the hull.

But there isn't time to mourn, there's barely time to gather herself and get inside the ship before she hears them rushing towards her. She imagines that there are a few packs out there, enough to split up and still take on two groups of adults and still more to create a state of panic as they snap twigs with the pads of their feet and growl menacingly from various directions.

Like a game.

Mariel works to bind wires together and she manages to get a small light flickering on the dashboard, just enough to tap out a message. She doesn't know the energy isn't enough to get it out of the planet's atmosphere. And she doesn't know there's a gash in the ship, just big enough for them to slip in, and they pull her away from the station with powerful jaws that clamp at her waist and eventually her neck. At least it…

There comes a screaming through the trees, something foreign, muttering half words and mumbles. The tall muddied beings that slide down over the hill with their furs and hunched bodies would blend in with their surroundings if they hadn't moved. But there's nothing to hide from now. They smoothly come to a stop just beside the ship and growl at the dogs before taking in the woman lying dead on the ground. They eye one another and go silent before creeping noiselessly back into the fog.


	2. The Unsuccessful Proposal

"No," Clara asserts, arms crossing over the blue flowers at her chest as she stares hard at the lanky man looking back at her in frustration. "Absolutely, no," she repeats, a hint of a smirk playing at her lips as the Doctor presses his palms into his sides.

They've been standing at the back entrance to the console for what feels like forever with him repeating the question and her repeating the answer and it's beginning to feel like a game to her – one she's played before. The child requests something they cannot have; the nanny dutifully denies them the thing. And the child stomps his foot.

He lifts an open hand towards her and demands, "Clara, marry me."

Request number eleven. She shakes her head. Stubbornly, and amused.

"It's not a real marriage," he reminds in a sputter.

"Still nope," she snaps at him.

"Clara!"

His voice is exasperated and she's growing wary. He's never this persistent unless there's a motive he's not letting on about and she knows she can't just ask him – he'd tell her she was being ridiculous. _Impossible_! She moves around him and then rounds the Tardis console, leaning against the metal railing closest to the doors as she informs him firmly, "Last time I fake-married you I ended up dunked in red goop and preserved in a glass bubble."

"And I _saved_ you," he points, shifting on his heels to face her. "Nothing will happen, you're just not allowed on this planet without an intergalactic wedding license and I don't have one lying about."

She swoops towards him and surprises him by shoving one hand quickly into his inside coat pocket, tantalizingly close enough to make him stare skyward, body frozen as she seizes what she's looking for and then she brandishes an open wallet and declares, "Oh look, I found your psychic paper that can magically be an intergalactic wedding license! _Like last time_."

His face is sour. "Doesn't work that way on this planet – psychic paper proof."

"Find your real wife then," she spits. "You said you had a granddaughter, which would lead one to believe you had a daughter, which would lead one to believe you had a wife – unless you're the sort to spread yourself without commitment and I don't take you to be that sort." She pauses. "Unless you _are_ that sort."

They stare, curiously, at one another for a moment before he tells her honestly, "First wife, long gone." Then he adds quietly, "And no, I'm not."

Clara ignores the fact that he said 'first wife' and watches him look away before nodding and saying, "Then I can't _actually_ marry you because it wouldn't be fair to you. Or me – I don't take that sort of thing lightly either."

Closing his eyes, the Doctor straightens. "Clara, it wouldn't be real."

"You said yourself, it sort of has to be real – documentation from what church establishment on what planet did you say? Odd name I can't pronounce? Pelux… Pluckta… Pluxapplortia…" she stammers as he corrects to no avail, then shakes her head. "I would be married to an alien. _My stars,_ think of the _paperwork_ when I got back home!" She smiles at the sullen expression on his face and hands him back the wallet. "Why do you want to see the planet so badly you'd be willing to pop through a space wedding drive-thru with me?"

He shrugs, "Never been? _Curiosity_?" Why did he not consider she'd ask? Why did he not consider she'd refuse his request? _Why was she constantly so stump_ish!

"Something you're not telling me?" She adds ceremoniously. And his face squints like she's gained a prize he's sought to withhold and he's disappointed at his transparency. "Come on, _Doctor_ – you never just _go_ to a planet, do you?"

There isn't a real answer though, not one he could admit to her anyways. He couldn't just tell her that the planet was teeming with psychic energy that allows couples free entrance into one another's minds for the sake of further bonding and that he _might_ be able to get away with not telling her so that he _might_ discretely take advantage of this and he _might_ enter her mind and he _might_ discern _who_ she was, or _what_ she was. And he did love bathing with fish and he'd heard the food was unbelievable.

He sulks instead, turning away from her a moment before snarling, "Nevermind."

Sliding to the console, he re-enters now-familiar coordinates for a specific spot on Earth – the Maitland's front yard – and he slaps a golden handle upward to start the engines.

"And anyone not willing to pop through a space wedding drive-thru with you would be _barking_ mad," he grumbles, smirking because he knows the shade of pink she's turned just behind him.

Because he knows the effect he has on his companions.

She moves to stand at his side, clearing her throat and pretending she hadn't heard. Her large eyes peer up at him sideways and she glances up at the screen, telling him sadly, "Home?" All of the build-up in the previous moments gone; replaced with a loneliness that shocks him.

They don't know the effect they have on him.

"We can't go, so we don't go," he replies with a shrug.

"So we don't go _anywhere_?" She pleads.

He looks back at her, gripping the edge of the console beside him looking like a child who'd just had their ice cream taken away. He's seen the look before and it both invigorates him and saddens him – she's become attached and he's become quite attached in return, and it can become dangerous. One more spin, one more adventure, pushing the bounds of their abilities and one day… he looks away, trying not to think about it. About any of the others. He looks to Clara and that empty spot fills again; fills over in a way that always surprises him when the small smile breaks into a wide and intoxicatingly hopeful grin.

"Oh fine," he gives a toggle of his head as he rolls his eyes playfully. "We'll see the setting suns of Spod."

"Spod?" She repeats with a look of amusement.

"Well I didn't name it!" He responds to the eyes she's giving him.

She does a small, almost indiscernible hop, and a giggle that tickles him, always unexpectedly, as she points to the center tubes that start to move and commands, "_Onward_, captain!"

He laughs heartily as the ship lunges forward and she grips him with one hand, and the Tardis with the other, as they move through space rapidly. But then something is wrong. He feels it instantly. There's a shift in the turbines and a pull on the compressors, and the Tardis whines her discontent. The Doctor works feverishly at the controls and Clara can sense the panic radiating out from him. She releases him so he can make his way around the Tardis to flip a few switches and grab hold of a lever, shaking it roughly before it gives and slams down.

"What's wrong?" She shouts through the angry howl of the time vortex around them.

He glances, wide-eyed, at the front doors, feeling the swoop of the ship as it lowers rapidly, towards whatever has hold of them, greedily yanking them towards a destination he's certain he doesn't want to see. He can feel the gravitational field in the Tardis shifting and he works to correct it. Grasping a handle near his waist, he glances up to the woman struggling to hold on, thrusting a hand in her direction for her to take, but it's too late. Clara gives a yelp as she loses her grip. Colliding with the ground in a grunt, Clara reaches out to grasp a surface, but it's slick under her fingertips and she's sliding down the ramp, feet slamming into the Tardis doors painfully.

"Doctor!"

"CLARA!"

Clara tries to move to reach out for something to hold onto, but the force of gravity is too great, and the trembling door underneath her unlatches. Clara screams as she slips through, hands managing to hold onto the door still shaking, but shut. She looks down over the forest below, lifting her legs to avoid the top of a tree branch and then she glances back up at the Doctor.

With one foot pressed against a chair on the deck for balance, he's working the controls, sweat beginning to build at his brow as he tries to right the Tardis. If he could just get her upright, he could pull Clara back in, and they could land. At least if they land proper; he could get his wits about him. But the ship is screaming alongside the woman hanging below as they dip even closer to the ground beneath them and suddenly there's a crack. The sound of something breaking a thick branch and he turns quickly because the howling is now simply the wind through the open door that swings.

Clara is gone.

And he is crashing.


	3. The Hard Landing

The Tardis hits the surface with an incredibly explosion of sparks and smoke and he can hear the contents of the rooms spilling over as the gravity field generator shuts off completely. In an instant, the chlorinated waters of his pool come pouring out over him and that's when he can't hold on any longer. He slips away from the console in a gurgled shout and he's rushing towards the Tardis doors through which he can still see the spinning world – they haven't properly landed yet – and he feels the shock of the side of his head knocking into a closing door.

And then there's the ground, soft and squishy and just a smidge wet and he tumbles over it in a mess of grumbles and grunts, the Tardis looping over him and disappearing into the forest, still trying to get herself upright and flight-bound despite the lack of a pilot and whatever was happening. The Doctor slides to a stop and winces in pain, arms and legs splayed out on the soggy ground. Swallowing hard, he hisses against the throbbing in his mind. He tries to look about, but his vision is blurry and he chuckles quietly.

"First, a nap," he manages, blanking out entirely.

Clara sits upright and shouts weakly, "Doctor," but she's back down just as fast, eyes pinched shut, hands finding the worst of the aching spots on her body – her head and her midsection – and she can feel a stinging just beneath her right knee that she's afraid to look at.

Slowly, she examines her gut with her fingers and judges it's just bad bruising, same with her head, and she carefully picks herself back up on her elbows to look down at the scrape that's taken a chunk of the stalking off her right leg. She touches it gingerly before looking around to see where she was and to, hopefully, catch a glimpse of the blue box she assumes would have turned around to get her.

"Probably kicked me out herself," she moans of the Tardis before pushing herself off the ground to try and stand. Her stomach, which took the brunt of the hit to the branch that dislodged her from the door, was angrily screaming at her for ice and aspirin, but she ignores it, hobbling slightly in the direction she thought she'd been going.

Towards the taller trees, she knows.

Standing still, she calls out, "Doctor?" and listens to the word echo out over the land eerily.

Surely if she could make her way to him, he'd know exactly where they were. He would be landed by now, giving the Tardis a sturdy talking to, and he would zip it back up into the air to look for her – or create some sort of tracking device to find her, or something. Something, she hopes, waiting. With a sigh, she understands that she might have to look for the Doctor and it occurs to her that he might not have fared any better than she did in her landing.

It's a frightening thought.

Big blue box falling out of the sky.

_How big of a bang would it make_?

Listening, Clara only hears the wind softly rustling the leaves above her. And then she gets that feeling, the one that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand as the gooseflesh travels over her body and she whips her head around, eyes narrowing as she searches the trees for the thing that's watching her.

"Just your overactive imagination," she whispers to herself.

Closing her eyes, she focuses herself, and then opens them again and begins to limp. She tries to make a mental map of the place, because if she is travelling in the wrong direction, she'd like to be able to return, but every direction she looks it's the same trees. Maybe a hill or two. A rock. A tree stump at an odd angle. She pulls at her stockings, ripping the bottom half of the right leg into a few strips and tying one to a tree. If the Doctor passed it, maybe he would understand it was her – didn't seem like there was anyone else around to do it.

She shivers slightly as she continues on and Clara becomes concerned that her injuries are worse than she had feared. She was starting to get dizzy and she could see her hands were pale. _Maybe you've just gone into shock, is all_? The thought wasn't comforting her one bit. She rubs her hands together as she looks upwards and sees the reddish sky above and the outline of a large planet, or moon, hazy and so very far away. Maybe that was Spot. Spod, she corrects. It was Spod and there were beautiful sunsets happening very soon. Smiling to herself, she imagines being there with the Doctor at her side, warm on a beach, watching the suns go down – she'd have to ask him how many there were.

A twig snaps, bringing her out of her daze and she looks around, seeing no one, and quickens her pace.

He wasn't a sleeper and while he could be considered a dreamer, the Doctor didn't actually get a lot of time to dream, but now he was unconscious and when uninhibited, his mind was left to his own wiles. It should have amused him, but it terrified him. They were his true thoughts, hidden beneath the composed man.

And they required Clara to wear a pink tutu and dance.

And he got to wear the clown make-up with the honking nose.

Because the Doctor loved a good fair.

Except when the slapping began. That wasn't exactly part of the fun. She dances in his direction and calls his name as he manipulates a balloon into the shape of a cat – or at least he thought it looked like a cat, but it might as easily have been an elephant, or a baboon – and proceeds to tap his cheek lightly with the back of her hand, smiling at him and calling him again, this time more urgently.

"Clara, I made a cat!" He tells her, brandishing the yellow object with a gaping smile.

"DOCTOR!" The sting of her palm on his face jars him awake and he raises both hands in defense, looking at her in shock before looking about.

The dream, sadly, gone, and he looks to her and utters, absently, "No, tutu."

"What?" Is all she manages, face contorted in disgusted confusion. "Were you dreaming?"

He pushes his palms into his eyes, rubbing at them a moment before shooting upright and then grabs at a knot in the muscles of his back as he stumbles about. Clara hobbles behind him, arms outstretched in case he comes close enough for her to help him keep his balance and he finally falls against a tree. The Doctor gives her a guilty face and turns away when she smirks.

"Bad landing," he groans. "Very bad. Not on the feet. Not remotely standing up."

"Where is the Tardis?" Clara asks, standing still and surveying the rough skids in the soil and the quiet fog around them.

Turning, the Doctor pulls the Sonic out of his coat pocket and waves it about, buzzing at different cadences over the space around him before settling on a direction and pointing. He rubs at his neck, "Not far, that direction."

"When you say, 'not far', do you mean to say, 'Clara, it's very far and we're probably in a lot of danger', or do you mean 'not far, just over the hill'?" She's looking at him, but her eyes are still darting over the land.

He approaches, still stretching his aches and smiles down at her, waiting for her to glance up at him and the look of fear staining her face pains him. "Just over the hill, very far, and we _are_ probably in danger," he tells her honestly.

She only nods.

"Must be a powerful planet, or a powerful something on the planet, to pull the Tardis in like she did," he admits, lowering to the ground with a grunt to Sonic the foliage and read the instrument. "Gravitational field seems amplified, but not enough for what happened, or at least not that I can read – quite a bit of interference..." Standing, he begins to walk, all the while taking readings and looking at the glowing green device with curiosity. "Unless it gives out an occasional pulse that just happened to grab us while in the vortex, or maybe there's some weaponry – but I'm not reading it… Or rather, I'm reading too much – too many blips of ships, it's scanning the planet as organic inorganic…" he continues mumbling to himself.

Clara limps just behind him, hands occasionally reaching up because she wants to grab hold of his long coat for support, and for comfort. She's absolutely sure she just saw a shadow dart between the trees in the distance. Something on four feet that had yellow eyes and possibly a hundred teeth. She laughs to herself, gaining his attention.

"Please, share," he tells her with a smile, voice weak.

"Oh, it's nothing. Imagination playing tricks on me," she says with a wave of a hand.

He slows and she collides with him softly, but shouts out.

"You're hurt," he manages, looking down at her leg as though it'd suddenly grown out of her body. "Clara, you fell out of the Tardis," he says the words almost to himself and he scans her with the Sonic, which gains him pursed lips and a lowered brow. He looks to the Sonic and then rubs at his forehead before looking around again.

"What?" She questions, chest frozen because she can see his entire composure break for just a second and she knows it can't be good. "What is it, am I alright?"

He feigns a smile and lies, "You're fine, Clara. Bit knackered, but otherwise fine."

She shakes her head and touches her midsection again, breathing in sharply, but shortly, because the pain is quite intense now that the adrenaline was wearing down. He tries to look comforting; she tries not to cry. Clara smiles up at him and tells him, "Then let's get to finding the Tardis – we have a sunset to get to."

He bends slightly, offering his body, and she hugs him with her right arm for leverage, walking with him over the terrain slowly, all the while trying to shake the feeling that they're being watched. And it isn't until she notices that his head begins darting to the same side as she'd been looking that she understands she isn't imagining things – there's something there, stalking them.

"Should we run," she whispers.

Lowering his head, he gives her back a quick rub of his hand and shakes his head, smiling defiantly, "No, we don't run."

"Should I not run?" She questions, quickly, then repeats, "_Specifically_, should I not run?"

"You should not run," he tells her honestly. "Of course, you may not have a choice."

"Why's that?"

"It's coming closer."


	4. A Broken Companion

He doesn't make any sudden movements and Clara braces herself for whatever pain she'd have to endure if they did have to hurry their way through the forest. She finds that the longer they're trekking on, the more aware she is of how much she actually is hurt. Her leg is becoming sore, each step more unbearable, even at half weight, and her ribs are aching in a way that makes it hard to breath. She suspects she might have broken a rib – she hopes it's just that, because any internal damage beyond that… she doesn't even want to think of the consequences.

Or the grave he would have to dig.

And she can see on his face that he doesn't want to think on it any further either. They move just as slowly as they had, each peeking out on occasion to what looks like an overgrown wolf sneaking its way through the trees some fifty feet away. Clara clenches her teeth as they move down over a steep hill and she's tempted to shout out at it because it feels like it's trying to frighten them and she does hate these games.

"Why do you suppose it's taking it's time?" She finally asks, voice disappearing into his vest.

He shrugs. "It's possible we aren't considered a threat yet. As long as we keep moving slowly and quietly, it will simply watch us go."

"Or it's already eaten something else and is waiting for its appetite to return," she quips.

"Always the optimist," he snarks.

"Says the unbroken man," she replies dryly.

The Doctor stops her. "You're not broken," he tells her.

She nods. "You're telling me that because you don't want it to be true and you don't want me to panic, but I saw your face when you looked at the Sonic – something's wrong, and I'm ok with you not telling me because you don't want to frighten me, but it's too late… I am properly frightened."

"Three small fractures on your ribs," he admits with a frown. "One to your leg, just below the knee."

"Well then," she replies calmly. "Not so bad, all things considered."

"Not so bad because you're in shock." He glances at her. "Which is wearing down."

"How can you be sure?"

"You're feeling the pain," he tells her as he watches her wince on the next step, and his eyebrows come together in a sympathetic knot.

"And if we have to run?"

He nods, "Hopefully the adrenaline kicks in and you're just fine. Unless you fall."

"What if I fall?"

"Bone fracturing? You could worsen the injuries. Snap a rib; puncture a lung – break the leg completely."

"And get eaten," she offers.

"And that," he agrees.

Clara looks him over, "How come you're not hurt."

"Oh, I am hurting," he chuckles.

"Doesn't seem it," she grumbles at him.

He looks down at her, "Are we really going to _argue_ over who got it _worse_?"

"Well, I'd win." She shakes her head, then shrugs, "Better than thinking about the wolf making eyes at us; trying to decide who's the leaner cut," she looks him over again. "You're all bones."

He snorts.

She peers up at him, "Amuse you?"

"You're just curvier, I suppose." She hits his chest roughly with a closed fist, then winces as the motion sends jabs of pain through her injuries. The Doctor raises a hand to the spot, rubbing it. "He's going to eat who he catches first."

"The _curves_," she nods.

"Shut up," he tells her angrily, and he gets a curious look in return. "He's not eating either of us."

The tone is discernibly different, upset at even the notion and he raises his Sonic again, pointing, "There is something up ahead, but I can't get a proper read – not sure if it's the Tardis or not – either way, it could provide a place to hide and figure things out."

"We only have to figure out how to get off this planet." Then she looks at him, "What is this planet anyways?"

"Don't know."

"You," she laughs. "You don't know what this planet is?"

"You think I know everything?"

"No," she shakes her head, "But _you_ do."

He does a double take at the smirk that flutters over her lips and then quietly disappears as he adjusts his grip on her and quickens the pace, which elicits a small sound of surprise from his companion. But she doesn't complain, she simply moves with him, eyes focused on the space in front of her. And then she sees the ship, jutting out of the ground and covered in moss and vines, a tree growing out over the side and she gives a hiccup of a laugh. They work their way to it, the wolf incessantly following at a distance, and when they're through a side hatch, the Doctor releases her and swings the hatch closed, Sonicing it shut.

"Have to look for any other points of entry – make sure we're safe," he tells her, hand landing softly on her right shoulder as she examines what looks like the cockpit, skeletons of a pilot and co-pilot still strapped into their seats, arm and leg bones missing, skulls crushed.

Clara can feel her insides trembling now, once the Doctor leaves. This was one of those moments when the allure of travelling with the Doctor faded away and the reality of the dangers of it set in. She takes a step, a forgetful step, and gasps aloud at the pain of the full weight now. She's never had a broken bone before – never did anything that could get her one. Maybe she could have a cast, the kids could draw on it and the Doctor could sign it, "_Sorry, my fault_."

Leaning against a panel full of switches and knobs, she waits, hearing the quick footsteps of him returning through the ship with an eager look on his face. He takes her hand and gently adjusts himself back at her side to half carry her through the ship.

"You find a lot of candy?" She asks him with a chuckle.

"Even better," he responds, and she's wondering if he's found a lot of talking candy when they come into a room that's brighter than the rest of the ship had been. Or at least the walls are painted a brighter color, and she recognizes some of the equipment – she thinks she does, anyways. "Medical bay," he pronounces, "I'm going to have to lift you up," he tells her, bending slightly.

"Lift me for what?" Clara cries defiantly.

He gestures towards an open pod that has flickering lights at the top. "Diverted what's left of the power into this chamber – it should have Nano-bots that could repair your bones."

"Divert that power into a beacon and get us some help!" Clara responds, logically. "Don't waste that on me."

"It wouldn't be wasted," he tells her firmly, tapping her forehead lightly with the Sonic. "Now, brace yourself, because this is going to sting."

His arm is under her knees before she can protest and she grasps for his neck as he pulls her off the ground and then lays her gently in the pod. Clara takes a breath, her ribs were on fire just underneath her breasts and her leg wasn't too fond of the sudden movement. It's enough to redden her face and jump start her heart. Clara feels his hand at her cheek, a quick caress of his thumb and then it's gone and she listens to the beeping as she opens her eyes to stare up at the cracked ceiling tiles.

"Doctor, we should be looking for the Tardis," she tells him weakly, fear bringing tears to her eyes.

He's working at something beside her and suddenly a glass shield slides up over her, trapping her inside. And then there's a cool mist that tickles her skin and makes her drowsy. Clara looks out through the gas at the man who's staring inside, a look of concern plaguing his face as he watches her, giving her a small nod to let her know it's ok to sleep. It's ok to _wander off_ just a bit this time.

The wolves circle the blue box lying against the mound of dirt it had compiled as it had skidded to a stop on this planet and they sniff it eagerly, the scent of prey lingering just inside. And they're able to climb in, through the half open front door, jerking slightly at each dong of the Cloister bell. They lap at the water puddled about, but wipe at their snouts with their front paws when the chemical taste itches their tongues. One wolf approaches the glowing console slowly; tail low to the ground, teeth bared slightly, and it smells the air.

Another moves towards a blue jacket hanging off the railing, pressing its nose into the fabric to smell the woman who'd been wearing it earlier. It begins to sniff at the ground, tracing her movements back out the front door and it howls into the darkening skies because the trail ends there. The other wolves gather and bicker, snapping at one another and looking out over the terrain and they spot the dark beings who linger a distance away, spears held in their hands. They've come to investigate the new vessel and they shout to frighten the dogs.

The eldest of them moves through the doors, knees bent slightly to keep his balance and he looks to the center console with wonder, gesturing back and raising an arm, prompting others to enter. He makes his way to the glistening controls and lays a hand on them. And the Tardis awakens.

She shakes violently and begins to hiss, air vents opening widely and blowing fervently at the intruders until they run back out into the forest and she swings her doors shut, locking them per protocol. The beings outside, some examining the outside of the box having seen the dimensions inside, were chattering amongst themselves. The elder looks around at the quiet woods and he smells the air.

"Find the woman."


	5. The Empty Vessel

The ship drains itself as she sleeps and he sits in a tall chair at her side waiting because he doesn't want her to wake up alone, stuck in the pod, worrying if he'd been eaten by wolves when she thinks she could have done something about it. The Doctor smiles down at the calm face behind the now clear glass and he fiddles with his Sonic, running a quick scan over her, satisfied with the results. The ship is useless anyways. What little energy it took to power the Nano-bots wouldn't have been enough to send out any kind of signal – at least not one far enough into space for anyone to receive it.

Her eyes open in a jolt and she shoots up, slamming her forehead against the glass before falling back onto the bed and lifting a hand awkwardly to face, her skin rubbing loudly on the casing above her as he swallows a laugh. She wouldn't be pleased if he took pleasure in her pain, he knows, and he uses the last of the energy to slip back the cover and watches the lights dim and then die out. The only light in the room now is coming from an observation window just over their heads and the Doctor can see the sun is setting outside.

"Ow," she moans.

"Don't worry, I'm always just as smooth coming out of surgery," he allows with a grin to match hers.

Clara tests her leg and sits up slowly, pressing against her rib cage before asking, "Are there gonna be Nano-bots in me now?"

He shakes his head. "They should make their way back out through natural orific…"

She sneezes.

"You've got some on your upper lip now."

Wiping at her face, both embarrassed and disgusted, she looks around the pod before gripping the sides to pull herself into a half standing position and the Doctor shifts, stretching upwards to cup his hands under her arms and help her out. When she's back on the ground, head just about level with his chin, she pulls away shyly, thanking him under her breath before moving away from him – putting distance between them – and she looks to the ship.

"So, not in flying shape," she says simply.

Hands folded in front of him, he nods. "It was a mining ship with scientific elements, probably had a professor on board to continue some study of archaeology and possibly they were just smart enough to keep a doctor handy – why they had the Nano-bots and this laboratory."

Clara turns back to look at him, watches as he stares down at his fingers a moment before she assumes, "I take it they didn't land here on purpose."

He smiles up at her, "No, it would seem they crashed; not unlike ourselves."

"So it's a shipwreck planet," Clara laughs. "The Bermuda Triangle of the universe."

Shaking his head, he begins, "Actually, the Bermuda Triangle is the result of quite a few elements coming together in a very unpleasant manor – weather, underwater thermal vents, and even…" he quiets when she gives him a look that says she's not really interested, and then continues, "Seems it's been on this planet for just over a hundred years."

"A hundred years and no one came looking," Clara says silently.

"Well, a hundred years and no one has found it," the Doctor corrects.

"Still a lot of time," she sighs.

He understands what she's thinking; they could be stuck on the planet. Unless they found the Tardis, and if the Tardis was in working condition – though he supposes if it wasn't he could fix it, even if it took a while. Last time it only took a few days, but he didn't know what damage whatever gravitational field pulled them in did. If it wasn't too bad, she'd actually be repairing herself. Regenerating, he smiles absently.

"Sometimes I wonder what's so amusing in that thick head of yours," Clara tells him and his eyes snap up, finding her walking out of the room carefully and back into the hall corridor.

They move in tandem, walking over the layers of dirt and dust that have accumulated in the ship and she shivers, hands coming up to rub her shoulders. She'd left her jacket in the Tardis, on the railing near the console, he remembers. Shaking out of his own, he drops it down on her shoulders and smiles because it's nearly to her ankles.

"But then you'll be…" she starts, looking up at him uneasily.

"Don't be stubborn," he interrupts. "I'll be fine."

Quieting, she slips her arms into the sleeves and pulls it shut at her chest with fingers that just peak out from beneath the purple tweed. They walk the hall and find sleeping quarters, storage rooms with equipment that looks foreign to Clara, a mess hall with food still sealed in crates in a back pantry, and they find a documentation room. Clara runs her fingers over the logs and pulls one out, scanning the contents while the Doctor searches on his own. If they _had_ been looking for this planet, maybe there'd be some information.

"Moons of Quatar?" Clara asks.

The Doctor smiles fondly. "Mining," he responds, turning to explain, "In Earth's past coal was mined as a source of energy, then other sorts of fuel, wind turbines, solar panels, etcetera, etcetera… in the far future, there are Quatar crystals. One the size of my Sonic can power a vessel of this size for its lifetime. It's a dangerous mission: deep space, rabid oversized poisonous spiders, and freezing temperatures at night and not many sign up for the task. But the payment for one trip out can be tremendous if you survive, and you've got a good chance of survival if you put together a smart enough crew."

Pulling a faded photo out from underneath some charts on a pin board, Clara shows it to the Doctor. A fifteen person crew, eleven smiling rugged men, three women – one with the longest reddest hair Clara had ever seen – and one smaller rounder man beside her, all eager to start their mission.

"They're all gone," she says solemnly.

"Well, it's been a hundred years," the Doctor points out, but he knows it's no comfort. She puts the photo on the desk and wraps her arms around herself. "We should rest for the night."

"I've just slept," she tells him.

"You've healed, and you were only out for twenty minutes." He smiles at the surprised face she gives him and then nods back to the rest of the ship. "The sealed food back in the kitchen should still be good; we could get something to eat."

"Hope it's not tripe," she tells him, making a face as she passes.

They explore the kitchen, both jerking at each odd sound they hear from outside of the ship. They both share the wish that they were at least stuck in the Tardis – _they know the Tardis_ – and they end up sitting on the ground in the kitchen against the wall facing the main door with two 'dinner meal' boxes that they tear open slowly. He's fidgeting with a spoon and she gets the impression this is possibly the longest he's had to sit still for a very _very_ long time and it amuses her as she looks down at the various small globs of what she _knows_ is food.

"You first," she tells him. A dare.

_Why does it feel our relationship is built on dares?_

He makes a face and shifts, bending slightly and poking at a brown lump before pinching off a piece and bringing it to his lips. "Some sort of meatloaf," he mumbles.

Clara takes a bite of her own and raises her eyebrows slightly. It's not as bad as she though it would be. "Do you think they died in the crash? The only bodies were the pilots."

The Doctor looks over at her. He doesn't want to tell her there was a closed door at the end of the hall that had been for the passengers to sit for entry to the moon they were originally aiming for… that still had parts of passengers in them. He tries a green pile and wrinkles his nose against the taste of peas.

"Maybe they're somewhere out there," he reassures.

But she looks him in the face and utters, "You don't lie very well."

"I lie spectacularly well," he challenges. "You're just a very good _nanny_."

The words make her laugh as they finish their meal and sit in the silence together. Clara looks about, occasionally finding him in her field of view – knows he's doing the same – and she takes a long breath. It feels like the worst date sometimes, being with him, but there's something enjoyable about it. Something exciting. She imagines that if they ever made their way to the destination he'd intended, for the purpose he intended, it would be far less exhilarating.

"Do you think they're still outside, looking for a way in?" She asks in a whisper.

He leans down to her and replies, "Oh, definitely."

"Do you think it's a good idea to sleep, with them out there pawing at the door?"

The Doctor head is almost touching her own as he promises, "I won't sleep."

She glances up, "Maybe we should find a more suitable room."

Staring down into her eyes, he finds it momentarily hard to swallow before he nods and straightens, lifting himself off the ground and offering her a hand. He has to shake away whatever dark thoughts were lurking just under the surface of his mind to concentrate on the task at hand. She means the doors to the kitchen area were the sort that didn't lock – they swung easily – and she would feel more comfortable if they were holed up in a room with a lock on the door that would deter wandering wolves looking to eat her curves.

_Eat her_.

EAT. HER.

The Doctor pushes out into the hall, "You're distracting," he mumbles, and she huffs a laugh in response that he turns to, seeing the amusement on her face as she adjusts his jacket over her shoulders.

"You're incorrigible," is all she responds.

"What?" He stops just outside of the kitchen.

"It was an equally cohesive answer."

"It was not cohesive at all."

"Exactly." She stands straight. "Why am I _distracting_? What have I done?"

He turns away and surveys the hallway with the Sonic.

"My injuries…" she says quietly. "You had to stop and tend to them." He looks at her sideways and sees something working in her mind and waits. "If you hadn't had to stop for me, you would have found the Tardis and you would be off to sail the universe," she concludes. "I am a distraction."

Dropping his hands at his sides, he spits, "That's not what I meant!"

"What _did_ you mean?" She challenges.

A howl rolls through the ship and the Doctor shouts, "RUN!"


	6. Hide and Seek

They tear through the ship, listening to the scrapes of nails over hard surfaces and the Doctor can feel both of his hearts hammering in his chest because it sounds like the wolves are coming from both directions. He turns back to look at the terror on Clara's face and he sees the first beast round a corner near the back. The end of the ship must have come off in the landing and he'd been so worked up over the medical equipment and the possibility of healing Clara that he hadn't conducted a full search of the ship. Otherwise he would have noticed the vulnerability.

She _was_ a distraction.

_But a _lovely_ one._

He looks forward and sees another wolf near the cockpit and he stops short, feet sliding in the muck on the ground as he Sonics a door and pushes it open, grabbing hold of Clara's wrist in a wad of his coat and giving her a hard yank inside. She collides into him as they crash into the room, but the Doctor doesn't let go of the door with one hand, nor the woman with the other. She regains her balance and rushes towards the door, under his arm in the small space, pushing it shut with him against the toothy snout that begins to push inside.

There's growling and a ferocious bark that startles them, but they lean into the door, grinding it against the animal that's still trying to force its way in and it finally gives a squeal of pain and backs away. The door slams shut and Clara slides a metal lock across, latching it and then moves back, hands coming up to cover her mouth and she's crying. The simple gesture surprises him because she's remained relatively – no, _rather_ _absolutely_ – cool through everything they'd been through so far.

"Clara?" he questions quietly.

She smiles and shakes her head. "Downloaded into the Shard cloud, almost devoured by a vampire planet, attacked by an ice man, battled a ghost, dunked in a vat of red poison, fall out of a Tardis mid-crash…" her voice tappers off and she offers a weak laugh, "And a dog, that's what has me terrified."

He gives her a sympathetic look. "I've met quite a few terrifying dogs in my time," he tells her.

"I got locked in a shed for three hours once. As a child," she responds quickly. "Got chased on my way home from school – some big breed, wouldn't know the name of it if you showed it to me now, but I got chased into a shed and finally. _Finally_. After three hours my mum came and shouted it away. Scooped me up and took me home for ice cream." Clara wipes her eyes and drops her hands at her sides. "I'm not fond of dogs."

With a nod, he turns slowly and presses his ear to the door and listens. Outside he can hear them scratching at the door, howling for backup and then barking at one another and he nods, brow furrowed before whispering, "They're sure we can't stay in here for long – last bloke only lasted…" He leans back.

"You can understand them?" Clara hisses. "You _speak_ dog?"

"Yes, I _speak_ dog; I thought we went over this?"

Clara nods, looking about the small closet of a room and she surmises it must be a study of some sort. Books line one shelf, held in by a sturdy net, and a dry erase board sits with diagrams and silly drawings on the other. In back there's a desk with a broken lamp and they stand in the very narrow space between it all.

"What are they saying?" She finally asks as he stands there silently.

The Doctor lowers his head.

"What are they saying?" Clara repeats, sternly.

He looks her over and admits, "They're admiring the taste of their last kill. Some large rodent in the forest."

She turns a light green and backs further away from the door, backing up against the desk.

Whipping out his Sonic, he flashes it at the small space under the door, increasing the volume and waiting for a response and he gets it. There's a series of whines from the other side, but as soon as he turns it off, they're back pacing in front of the door. He clasps the device shut in his palm and grinds his teeth, looking sharply to Clara, who's staring at him in a quasi-state of shock. As though it should have worked.

He turns the Sonic on them again, this time to scan, and he reads it quickly, looking perplexed as he glances at the woman who's waiting. "They're scanning as wolves, or at least as _Earthly_."

"Yeah, so they're wolves."

"No, I mean, they're wolves – _planet Earth_ wolves, except," he taps the Sonic because it seems conflicted.

"How did…" she starts, then settles on, "Wait. Are we on Earth?"

He scans the ground, concentrates the Sonic's pulses on what the planet is made of for so long he comes up with a shaky hand from the effort. The tool is abuzz, but it doesn't return the results he expects and he shakes his head, "Not quite Earth, but quite Earthly wolves. A twin planet, possibly, _but we were nowhere near your solar system_. But there's an incredibly gravitational field underneath. And it's charging."

"Charging," Clara repeats, "What do you mean it's charging?"

He raises his hands, rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger a moment before letting it drop away to tell her, "There's too much power and much like the sun can have a tantrum of solar flares that send radiation spilling out into the galaxy, this planet sends out a gravitational flux wave that inadvertently disables the flight mechanisms of any ship close enough to get caught in the wave. She sucks them in and grounds them."

"Something landed here with wolves," Clara surmises, gaining a look of surprise from him. "What, I'm not daft," she tells his smirk.

He turns to the door again. "But nothing else survives… just the wolves. In all the years – space travel has been around for a long time by this point – there should be survivors." He straightens with a beaming grin. "Colonists. Colonists for a new planet."

"Doctor?" Clara asks, moving closer to him. "Doctor, will the pulse affect us?"

"What?"

"The pulse that's charging. When she blows, do we get blasted into space?"

He laughs, "No, _that's_ daft." Then he thumps his head with a finger, "It's _gravity; _pulls us in. We might possibly get knocked on our rear ends, or it might equalize – obviously the wolves aren't affected."

"Why would the wolves be affected?" Clara steps forward, then backs away when a wolf snarls at the door, as if it smelled her. A thought that numbs her.

"Animals can sense fluctuations in atmospheric pressure, they can feel magnetic fields almost more acutely than some scientific instruments; obviously whatever effect the occasional pulse has doesn't affect them enough to have them clamoring for safety."

"Maybe they're hungry?" Clara whispers.

He looks to her and her eyes are on the gap beneath the door. He steps towards her, cupping a hand around the back of her neck. "Clara, it's going to be fine."

Her eyes come up to meet his. "Doctor, what if they're _so hungry_ that the thought of a meal overpowers the instinct to get themselves to safety?"

Wrapping her in his arms, he sighs into her hair because to him it's a simple fear. It's not imploding in space, or being zapped with a Dalek beam, or being turned into a Cyberman, or drowning in radiation, or any of a number of scenarios he could think of for him that would be far worse. It's a simple human fear and he's both amused by it and empathetic to the thoughts going through her mind. He didn't need telepathic energy to know she was thinking about how each bite of the bone would feel, or how long it would take to succumb, or if the wolves would end it quickly, or treat their meal like a toy for enjoyment.

She's quiet, hands calmly at his sides, and he wonders for a moment if she's fallen asleep on her feet, but when he shifts back, she peeks up at him, and they share a small smile. It's the smile that tells him she'll be alright, as long as he's there by her side because she trusts him infallibly and it makes him sad. _There will come a day, Clara, when you – _like all of the others_ – will come to understand that I am absolutely fallible_. The Doctor shifts her around and she involuntarily shoves him into the desk to get further from the door.

"Bit of a pinch," he tells her awkwardly and she goes red in the face, but doesn't budge against him.

"It's _terribly_ selfish, but I'd rather have you between me and the wolves," she tells him honestly.

They do another quick swing and now she's biting a smirk before she pulls herself to sit on the desk as the Doctor pulls the chair away and makes himself comfortable in it, leaning his elbows on the desk beside her. He swivels slightly, fiddling with the Sonic between his hands and looks up as she lays her head against the wall behind her, looking up at the cracks in the hull that are giving them what little light they have.

"So how do we get out?" She asks lightly.

He looks back to the door. "I could blast them with a Sonic wave and hope that the sound is enough to keep them at bay long enough for us to get out…"

"And once we're back in the forest?"

"Hope the Tardis is nearby," he surmises sadly. It isn't really a plan and he knows it. The wolves could ignore the sound and they could jump on them as quick as they run out into the hall – as it is a confined space.

"We could hope someone else crashes?" She says guiltily, and he sees the sadness on her face, that she'd even make such a suggestion, but he nods in understanding when she looks to him.

The Doctor sighs and pockets his Sonic, then glances around the room. "Wait," he stands and pokes at the cracks in the hull. "We could get out."

Clara reaches up and pulls his hand away. "At night?"

He knows she means the sun is going down and wolves are nocturnal. "First light," he offers.

She furrows her brow in consideration.

"Clara, we can't stay here forever."

"I know," she interrupts. "A hundred years and no search party." Then she looks up at him and asks, "Could we be stuck here? Like genuinely be stuck here?"

He laughs lightly, "No, we just have to find the Tardis."

"You think it survived the crash?"

"If it hadn't, we'd all know…" he trails with a grin, then straightens, "Or maybe we'd cease to exist, time vortex and all… last time I used the explosion to reboot the universe."

Her eyes go wide, "The Tardis exploded?"

"Long story," he tells her with a shake of his head. "Very complicated. Big Bang two," he finishes and he looks to her as she turns away, considering the words. As if it had jarred some memory loose, but she shakes it away and he's curious. Maybe she's simply exhausted, he considers. He looks at the desk and the assortment of papers, books, and writing instruments strewn about and it pushes it off with a long swipe of his arm, gaining a look of confusion from the woman sitting atop it.

"Sleep," he tells her, nodding.

"But…" she gestures at the door.

"I won't sleep, I'll wake you in the morning," he assures, raising a hand to her shoulder to nudge her sideways and she allows it after a hesitant look, curling on the rough metal surface with an arm underneath her head. He strokes her hair a moment and that's all it takes for her to be out before he begins to work rummaging through the room. He just needs tools.

And possible weapons.

And a pack Jammie Dodgers.


	7. The Great Escape

The breeze is light on her cheek, but it's enough to startle her awake and she finds herself staring at the right ankle of a set of legs that are perched precariously on either side of her body. Clara turns slowly and immediately presses her eyes shut to avoid laughing aloud. "What are you doing?" She manages in a harsh whisper.

"Cutting the hull of the ship."

She works her way out from between his legs and then hops off the desk, stretching slightly and feeling the ache in her back and shoulder before shifting away from the door and into the desk again. "How long have you been standing there?"

He turns with a grin, "Most of the night – you're a fairly heavy sleeper, and you don't move very much."

The information feels far more personal than she knows it is to him, and she blushes, before cocking her head sideways to see what he's doing. There's a good sized set of lines about two feet apart in the material in front of him, through which the dawn light is shining and he's working his way along the bottom to cut open a flap.

"I haven't heard anything from outside in a while, so I popped my head out – they're asleep, just down the hall in a pack."

Clara nods and rubs her lower back. "How much left?"

"It's rubbed raw here, we might actually be near the tree so its roots might have done some of the work for us – just have to push this out and then hope the drop isn't too steep," he tells her quickly and quietly, concentrated on the device in his hand. Like a small jig saw made of a ruler, paperclips, and glue. She glances around at the mess of books around her. "I was reading, taking breaks."

"You could have woken me; I would have helped," she hisses at him.

He turns, "You dream about your mum." His voice is sad and he looks away hastily and she understands – if she was having a pleasant dream about her mother, he wasn't going to interrupt. His kindness outweighs the aching in his arms.

Clara climbs up on the desk next to him and she tries to get a look out through the slits he's made. She can see the fog through the trees and the sunlight that's casting beams through them. "How far do you suppose the Tardis is?"

The Doctor shrugs, "Can't be too far."

"But there's no way to be sure." And then she asks, "Did the gravity pulse happen while I was asleep?"

He checks his watch, "Still have a few hours."

Great, she thinks to herself. She'd hoped it had happened and had been _that_ uneventful on the ground. Some part of her was terrified that it would happen and they'd be lifted into the air and tossed back out into space, but she knows it's ridiculous – he'd made that obvious – and she pushes the thought aside. She watches him as he finishes, bending to set the tool down on the table.

Clara picks it up quickly, giving him a stare and telling him, "It's technically a weapon."

"Are you going to saw the wolf to death with it?"

She shrugs, "No, but I can get one good stab in the eye out of it! Maybe two if he's distracted!"

And he smiles because she's got a fire in her eyes now and it's what he needs, what _they_ need. He presses his hands to the hull and gives it a gentle push, increasing the pressure until it snaps back at the top and he freezes. Clara looks towards the door and they both wait.

"Go check," he whispers.

For a moment she gives him a look that calls him insane, but she slowly moves down and goes to the door, listening to the silence behind it before undoing the latch slowly and taking a breath. The Doctor keeps his hands on the panel, ready to jump down in an instant as she opens the door and looks out into the hallway. Clara can hear her heart beating in her ears, the notion that a wolf could jump her and she'd stand no chance heavy in her mind, but she sees the pack sleeping, just as the Doctor had said, and she slowly closes the door again, sliding the lock into place with a grimace.

"Come, come," the Doctor orders and she climbs back on the desk, grabbing hold of the edge of the opening.

He squats to hoists her feet up and she calls back quietly, "The tree is just outside," which is a comfort because otherwise, it was a slide down and that would most definitely cause noise. Also, possibly break their bones… _again_. Her weight leaves his hands and her legs disappear out of the window and then a vine smacks him in the face and she's on the other end, smiling back at him proudly.

The Doctor could kiss her in that moment, and he imagines that maybe if they get back to the Tardis and lock that door, he would. And she would square punch him on the nose and be right for it, he thinks to himself with a silent laugh as he pulls himself out of the room and settles a shaky foot on a thick trunk that wraps like snakes in crisscross patterns over the side of the ship.

They move as silently as possible, making their way back down to the ground and once there, the Doctor pulls his Sonic out from his pocket and scans the air, to Clara's delight on mute, and he points in a direction. "Is it the Tardis this time?" Clara manages.

"It's either the Tardis or another ship – either way, a place to take shelter from the wolves."

Quickening their pace, they move through the trees and just when they have some distance between themselves and the ship, Clara hears a howl that sends a spike of terror through her body. And then a second, somewhere off to the side – away from the ship, responds and their light steps turn into stomping madness as they tear between trees and leap over logs, all the while the Doctor turning to make sure the petite brunette is still on his tail.

Clara doesn't have much experience with running, at least she didn't before she joined with the lanky man who's clutching his Sonic and searching manically for that familiar blue box of his, but the sound of padded footsteps on the ground behind her does more to inspire her athletic abilities than the burning in her thighs can do to hinder them. She watches the Doctor point his Sonic up at a hill where a set of wolves have appeared and he blasts a sound wave at them that causes them to recoil and it brings a smile to her lips.

Her chest is on fire now and it seems like they might find the edge of the planet before they find the Tardis when she hears the growling not far behind. She turns to see the wolf gaining on them. Gaining on her, and she tries her hardest to make her strides longer, but it's no use. It leaps in the air and manages to snatch the back of the Doctor's coat within its teeth. Clara's frozen as it shakes its head, jerking her body about, and she sees the Doctor skidding to a stop ahead of her.

Slipping her arms back, she glides out of the coat and shouts, breaking into a run with a stretch of her hand to meet the one waiting and they're off again. The wolf barks madly behind them and then begins after them again.

"We have to move faster!" The Doctor warns.

"I'll just make my legs longer!" She retorts.

He half laughs, out of breath, and they slide down a small hill together, him catching her before she falls over at the end, and they're in a labyrinth of rocky protrusions that reach for the sky. Clara is disoriented and she raises her free hand to block her face, afraid that she'll run smack into a yellowish pillar as the Doctor yanks her through.

"Do you hear them?!" He calls back.

She takes a chance to turn, looking back between the columns of jagged rock, and then shakes her head, looking back at him, "I don't know. I don't see them!"

But he doesn't slow. He shifts his weight and she moves with him and she's thinking about how the Tardis could have avoided this. It would have been torn to pieces! Except it wasn't, she knew now, because that would be a time-altering event. It would be _some sort_ of event, at the very least.

The space between rocks is getting wider, as are the rocks themselves. Beginning to blend into one another like the walls of a canyon and that's when they hear the howl from a distance and the Doctor allows their pace to shuffle slowly to a stop.

He bends, hands on his knees as he inhales deeply and winces and she knows what he's feeling because each breath is like sandpaper in her lungs and there's a pinch in her side that she massages before straightening and looking ahead. There the rock face tappers off into what looks like thick forest and she wipes at her head with the back of her hand, then taps him and waits for him to glance up before she gestures.

"Keep going?" She asks.

"Never stay put, Clara," he breathes with a smile. And he doesn't say anymore, simply stands tall next to her and begins a hobbled walk through the dusty space between canyon walls.

Clara hasn't moved though, she's staring ahead now, eyes wide and he looks back at her and watches as she points a shaky hand up. The Doctor turns and sees the face peering back at them from the edge of the rock features, body hidden in the darkness and he clasps his hands together, raising them towards the figure before giving it a wave and calling out,

"Hello! I am the Doctor, and I am in need of some form of hydration."


	8. The Lonely Inhabitants

Clara smacks his hand down and hisses at him, "What are you doing!?"

The face hasn't moved, still there just barely visible from the darkness beyond and it stares at them eerily as the Doctor begins to make his way forward. Clara grabs hold of his arm and yanks, holding him in place and he turns, bending slightly to meet her eye as he tells her, "They're humanoid – not wolves."

With a look of anger, she replies, "I don't care what they are! What if they want to eat us as well?"

He laughs, "Clara, not everything here wants to eat us," he turns, "See?" The figure steps out of the shadows and plants the back end of a spear into the ground. "They just want to greet us with weaponry."

"_Impale_ us and eat us," Clara sings back cheerfully. "The luau I've always wanted!"

He turns and gives her a look that says, _Oh, Clara_, and then he moves forward again, "Hello!" He calls a second time. "My name is the Doctor and this is my companion, Clara. Who does not want to be eaten, if that's alright by you?"

Several men move into the light and Clara raises her eyebrows, "I might not be eaten," she whispers and gulps lightly because now she's far more afraid than she had been before. There are worse things than being eaten, she knows. "It's a man planet."

"You should be _pleased_," the Doctor declares in frustration. "All men – have your _choice_."

"More likely _they_ would have _theirs_," she points out.

He lifts an eyebrow and then smiles back at the men now approaching, "By _companion_, I mean _wife_."

"With the _wife_ again," she snarls.

"Want to be _chosen_?" He spits.

She takes his arm. And beams, shifting closer. "Wife! _Husband_. Belonging to one another!"

"Are you the pilot of the Police Box?" The first man asks in a gruff voice.

"English! Tardis is still translating," the Doctor tells Clara happily. "And you speak! Not grunts and garbles as one would be lead to believe by the spears and the mud and the muckiness!" He turns to tell the men. "And yes, I am the pilot of the Police Box, _they read_," he adds for Clara with a grin.

The spear rises and the Doctor and Clara jerk back slightly. "Your ship retains power where no other has; how is this possible?"

"She's a Tardis," he explains. "And she has power," he tells Clara, "She's alright!"

"She _attacked_ us. Sounds and lights, really," the man allows. "Wouldn't let us in."

"Good for her," Clara mutters and the spear is pointed in her direction. "Well, she's not yours!"

The man smiles then, lowering the spear. "You've survived the wolves, I must commend you."

"Survived," the Doctor laughs. "Very good at running," he offers. Then questions, "How have you survived?"

"Very good at hunting," the man responds with a small shift of the spear.

"No," the Doctor corrects, "How have you survived the planet? Are there others?"

The man looks back to his group and they nod to one another in agreement, "We are the remnant survivors of multiple crashes – surviving with our combined skills. We just want to go home."

"And where is that?"

"Earth," comes the quick and desperate reply. The man moves even closer and Clara wrinkles her nose slightly at the smell coming off of him. "We have a ship, but none of us in an engineer – none of us has been able to create a stable engine ignition source powerful enough to get off planet…"

"How long have you been here?" The question comes, not from the Doctor, but from Clara, who looks at the youthful faces of some of the men behind their leader and it gains her a curious look from the man at her side. But he only turns to look to their new friend for the answer.

And he looks to the ground. "Some of us have never known anything else," he admits.

Clara feels a strange lump in her throat and she feels a gentle squeeze from the Doctor and when she looks up, he's shaking his head slightly at her – a small promise that they won't find the same fate – and she gives him a small nod back, telling him she understands. They watch the man shift and walk back towards the darkness, turning to them just as he reaches its edge.

"You should come, the wolves are afraid of this place, but they will eventually come looking for you. And there are worse things out in these parts than the wolves."

"Where are we going?" The Doctor asks as they begin to follow.

"What worse things?" Clara asks quietly, simultaneously, going unheard.

There's a cold punch in her chest as they enter the thick forest beyond the canyon, but the Doctor lays a series of comforting pats on her arm with his free hand. She holds tight to it and she elicits a small breath of a laugh from him. The man leading them tells them bluntly, "We're going someplace safe."

And they both know it's all they're going to get because all of the men have turned their attention to the surrounding forest, some slowing to form a guard around the Doctor and Clara. She stays close to him, eyes peeled for movement around them and she can feel the chuckle he gives her because he thinks she shouldn't be afraid.

No, she knows. He plays psychology _very well_. He knows that she's afraid, so he plays aloof and unafraid in some attempt to get her to _think_ that if he is unafraid, then she should be also. But it doesn't work. The Doctor can zap a robot or two, but she felt the full fury of the beast on her back and she doesn't know what this other threat the man had mentioned is, but she gets the feeling it's _that_ threat they're worried about. And it frightens her, no matter how often the man at her side dips slightly to try and make her smile.

The reach a cliffside that juts up into the sky and a rough metal door stands heavily in their way before the man at the front gives a set of knocks that start the door opening. Clara sees the eyes peering out and she's surprised when a tall grey-haired woman in some sort of space suit pushes the door further for them, gaining a look of surprise herself as she grips tightly to the Doctor's arm.

"Where'd you find this lot, Dom?" She asks.

"Keep your voice down, Sissy, you know they're watching," the lead man hisses back at her, urging everyone inside the cave.

Clara and the Doctor are shoved forward and she trips over the rocks, balanced by the man she's reluctant to release and another at her right, and she finds herself in a darkened cave lit by small fires in corners or inside hollows in the rock face. The Doctor turns back to the duo and he smiles, then asks brightly, "So, you wouldn't happen to have any food?" Her stomach rumbles automatically and she feels foolish, glad that the color on her cheeks is hidden in the darkness. "Also, what is it we're really hiding from?" He gestures about, "A wolf doesn't need a door _that heavy_ to be locked to keep them out."

"Doctor," Clara urges. She looks around at the people inside now looking at them, all curious about the new arrivals and she notices that unlike the group that had ushered them in, these people are clothed almost normally – save for the children, and there are quite a few sitting in laps, or playing with hand-made toys – and Clara knows that can mean only one thing. "There are other people on this planet."

He looks down at her, nose wrinkled slightly in confusion before looking about and then the recognition flashes across his face, "So there's a native race," he offers, turning back to see Dom removing the thick furs from his torso and taking a rag that's handed to him by a woman carrying an infant. "A native race you're mimicking. Why?"

Dom wipes off his face and his demeanor calms somewhat. Enough to give Clara a sympathetic smile that weakens her grip on the arm still in her grasp. "When we crashed, we thought we were alone. We set out to explore, hoping there'd be a civilization…"

Sissy steps forward with a scowl, "What we found were other ships. Crashed and then ransacked. Didn't even take anything, just destroyed them."

The Doctor nods, "Chances are they don't understand what's happened, they're simply _battling the beasts_ _that fell from the sky_."

With a smile, Clara asks, "How long have you been here?"

But the Doctor interjects, "Why do you feel it necessary to dress in furs to travel outside of this sanctuary? Surely you could best a primitive society with your science and your knowledge."

Nodding to the Doctor, Sissy answers him with a simple, "You'd be surprised how quickly one of them can sneak up on you – even with the benefits of civility, after we lost a few to them; lost a child to them, we decided to concentrate our efforts on peaceful existence – and trying to figure out how to repair what's left of the ship we've managed to keep hidden. We take to the other ships, salvage bits here and there, and avoid them and the wolves. _Their wolves_. If we don't look or smell like one of them, they attack us – so we blend in. They're not so savvy, just barbarians, cannibals… monsters." Her upper lip curls in a way that gives Clara chills.

Throwing a shirt over his head, Dom addresses Clara, "We've been here just over thirty years and we suspect if we don't get transport out, we'll live out our days here." He raises a hand and she moves with him, glancing back at the Doctor as they shift away from him and Sissy – who go straight to talking about their crashed ship. Dom leads Clara towards a wooden table she can see is carved and strung together with wood and vine from the forest and she touches it gently, looks over the small loaves of bread – she supposes there must be some form of wheat on the planet, or like they'd found, a kitchen with stock that's still viable – and the woven baskets of odd fruit. "Eat something…"

"Clara," she offers, smiling up at him thankfully before picking up a small misshapen lump of bread and bringing it to her lips. "How many were there?" She asks lightly, "When you crashed?"

Dom takes a bite out of a large round green fruit that splashes a bit of juice in her face as he considers the question, as though he hadn't thought on it in a while, before admitting, "I'd say we took off with a crew of thirty six, headed for the mines, thirty two survived the crash." He gestures around, "Luckily we crashed near these caves and managed to barricade ourselves in."

She smiles at a small boy who toddles towards her and grasps onto her bare leg, looking up to babble at her and Clara easily finds his mother, watching with a grin of her own. "Hello," Clara tells him.

"Hi," he responds before hopping, hands tugging at her skirt. "Mama," he points back and giggles.

"Why don't you go on back to your mama," she bends to tell him, touching his nose and watching his face squish together in a wide grin. He turns and begins his waddled walk back to the woman who waits with a happy grin and outstretched palms. "How many children have been born here?" She asks sadly.

Dom hands her a fruit and she takes it, holding it in her hands as she finishes the grainy bread. "First lot were born about two years after we crashed. It's inevitable, you know," he laughs, "Stuck on a planet with nothing to do, eventually you form bonds, you fall in love, you have kids." Dom watches the room. "Now the kids have their own kids. Whole generation who've never seen their home planet," he finishes with a frown. "Don't know nothing but this hell."

Biting into the fruit, Clara nods and feels her eyes wet as she thinks on it. "The Doctor's ship. It can take you all home," she tells him, nodding hopefully and receiving an amused snort in return.

In an instance, she feels a dizziness take over her and she falls sideways, the fruit dropping from her hand as Dom shifts to hold her up. The ground under her feet begins to tremble lightly, but the nausea making her grimace is all she can focus on. The Doctor rushes towards her and she opens her eyes to find him staring into hers as he shouts up at the man beside her, "What have you given her?"

Dom laughs, letting him take Clara from him before telling him gruffly, but with a laugh, "Ain't given her nothin'. Gravity pulse is about to kick in."


	9. Shipwrecked

Pulling his Sonic from his coat pocket, the Doctor balances a disoriented Clara against his body while scanning the ground, whipping the device up to read the results as those around him stare with wonder at the glowing green wand he'd just produced. Clara is moaning something, one hand gripping tightly to the shirt at his back while the other covers her forehead and the Doctor glances around, seeing everyone in the room going about their normal routines – some occasionally reaching out to steady a small child or hold an item still on the surfaces near them.

The shaking slows to a stop and Clara drops slightly, but the Doctor catches her and shifts her towards a cot Dom is gesturing at, laying her down gently and running the Sonic over her to make sure she's alright. He sighs at the readings and then presses his own hand to his face before wiping it away and looking up at the man whose nonchalance has been replaced with genuine concern. Clara is still covering her head with her palms, making a small noise of discomfort.

"Just gravity sickness," Dom assures the Doctor.

"She's not used to the suddenness of the pull," he elaborates for Dom with a nod. "I've travelled quite a bit in my time – never felt it quite like that, but I'm accustomed to sudden shifts in gravity, but Clara," he looks back and chuckles, standing. "Are the pulses regular?"

Dom and Sissy exchange a glance and shrug, then nod together as Sissy explains, "We count our days by it – happens about the same time every single day. Pain in the arse at first…"

"But you've been here long enough to become accustomed to it," he allows with a grin. "And the children have grown up with it."

"Got it, I'm the one with no sea legs," Clara mumbles.

Sissy gets a glossed over look in her eyes and sighs, "Oh the sea – I haven't thought on it in a long time."

"There's no sea here?" The Doctor asks curiously.

"Streams and rivers," Dom offers. "Found a lake that has good fish… few extra eyes, but still good."

With a smile, the Doctor looks back as Clara sits up and is immediately set upon by a small girl who bends slightly to look Clara in the eye. "Can you braid my hair?" The girl asks her and Clara smiles weakly, nodding and watching as the girl turns to give her access to the length of dark hair lying against her back. There's a small chorus of giggles and the Doctor looks to see the children have gathered to watch Clara as she slowly works through the hair in front of her.

"Your ship, you said it was close by. Care to have a gander?"

Dom nods and turns to give the others instructions for the time he's gone, selecting a few still covered in furs to join them. The Doctor gets the impression the ship isn't as close as he'd have liked it to be, but he knows he has to take a look anyways. Firstly, he has to know that they're telling the truth because he would simply offer up a ride on his Tardis, but there's no guarantee that these people, already playing at games, aren't just masters at lies; Secondly, he really loves space ships and he might get a chance to see these _monsters_ they're hiding from; Thirdly, if there's a chance that he could repair their ship so that they could make it home on their own, he should be willing to take that chance.

Mostly though, he loves ships.

Clara stands as she finishes the braid and ties it off with a bit of twine she's given and she looks to the Doctor with uncertainty, whispering at him, "Can't we just find the…" he stops her with a finger at her lips.

Bending so that their noses are mere inches apart, he tells her quietly, "Stay here. Be safe. Make friends," and his hand slips to her neck to give her cheek a reassuring rub of his thumb before he moves away, head bowed slightly, feeling guilty for leaving her. But it was safer, he knew.

He looks up to Dom, who is already approaching the front door others are peering out of, and he manages not to look back – at least not to turn all the way around – but to glance at her out of the corner of his eye. Another child is tugging at her skirt, asking her for a bedtime story despite the fact that it's morning, and he emerges from the cave with squinted eyes and a sad smile.

It isn't long before he's lost the smirk on his face, climbing over muddied roots of overgrown trees and through ragged land that left his feet aching in their boots as they reached a domed structure, glancing around. The Doctor raised his Sonic and tested their surroundings – he wasn't reading anything living, or at least anything living that was large enough to be detected – and he nodded to where his Sonic was telling him there was an engine, a ship, a something to tinker with.

"Some sort of disguise?" He asks of Dom, who nods in response before moving towards it and brushing leaves off the outer shell to reveal a panel that he opens with a thumb print. Inside he presses a series of buttons and a door opens quietly. "I do hope it's bigger on the inside," the Doctor quips before adjusting his bow tie and entering behind two men who shift off to either side.

It's not, but it is sizable, and as the lights inside the camouflaged bunker flicker on, the Doctor takes in the ship, or what's left of it. Dom points and tells him the obvious, "It's an escape rocket."

"You arrived with just over thirty," the Doctor reminds him, receiving a nod, "Even if we could get this working, it wouldn't be large enough to take your colony of – I'd say closer to sixty – back home."

"We were hoping to send half home and come back for rescue."

"And destruction," the Doctor reads on his face.

"Those things out there?" Dom hisses. "They've killed us, they've killed countless people on this planet, we've found bodies torn apart by them and their wolves!"

Lowering his eyes to the ground, he swings them back up to the vessel and nods. "Let's concentrate on the fixing," he mutters, approaching the vehicle to take in its size, components, what's damaged, what's in fairly decent shape. "How were you able to hide this here?" He asks, palm laid flat on the grey surface of the ship, just under a set of burnt orange markings.

"It's where it fell," Dom answers honestly.

"It's designed to fall and disguise itself unless there's a pilot to give orders," another older man offers. "In case you fall behind enemy lines somewhere."

The Doctor nods. "The problem with the vessel isn't the engine, and it isn't the fuel – it's been recharging it's batteries for thirty years using the radiation from the sun we're revolving around, same as this coating and the lights. The problem is the ignition source. This ship wasn't meant to re-launch once it was used," he says with a smile before continuing, "So it would require a re-ignition source to propel itself out of this planet's orbit and back home." The Doctor scratches at his head and then shakes it. "We could modify the engines, I presume they're adjusted to work on Quatar crystals?"

Dom nods.

"We'll have to make them work on the one thing this planet actually has an abundance of." He imagines Clara would say, '_Wood_?' right about then and he gives an absent smile at the unspoken word before allowing, "Gravity."

Sissy eyes her for the better part of an hour as, one by one, the children approach and ask her to do things for them. Clara ignores the older woman, smiling politely as a little boy reaches up to touch her face, climbing into her lap and settling himself against her chest while the others point and whisper to one another. Behind her a six year old is napping peacefully in the cot, having been told the bedtime story he requested, nearby the eight year old is showing off her braided hair, and a red-headed moppet is bouncing around counting to ten just how she taught him.

Clara looks down at the sleepy toddler in her arms, his bright eyes drooping, and she rocks gently, humming at him as he fumbles with the chain around her neck, eventually dropping his hand into his lap and he's out. She gives a humph of amusement and glances up at the woman who has the same rounded cheeks and dark hair as the boy and she straightens slightly, but the woman raises a hand, shaking her head.

"Liam's been having a hard time sleeping," she tells her quietly. "Nightmares."

She glances down at the child, breathing softly against her collar, and frowns, "Not much you can do for nightmares except offer comfort and warm milk." She smiles up at the woman who sits next to her, careful about the child just behind.

"Spoken like a mother," she tells her.

Clara blushes slightly and shakes her head, "No, like a nanny."

"You and your husband, no children yet?" She asks with a small laugh and Clara thinks her cheeks might burst from embarrassment at the idea of her and the Doctor… with children. She actually laughs, imagining chasing them around the Tardis and keeping them from jumping out the front doors and into space while he stands at the console with his mouth agape at her accusations of not helping and also giving them intergalactically banned candy.

"No," she answers slowly, "No, no children."

"Pity," the woman sighs, stroking her son's hair, "Dunno about him, but you'd be good at it."

Clara manages a quiet thank you and glances up when another set of small hands land atop her knee and she sees another round face that wants to be picked up. The child doesn't wait, simply climbs up the space between the two women and then slips onto Clara's free knee, laying her head down and closing her eyes. "Beginning to feel like a mattress," she laments with a laugh.

"They like you," the woman offers, "I'm Maya."

Clara glances up at the other children, who turn quickly away with a giggle, before smiling at Maya and nodding, "I'm Clara."

Sissy makes a noise of disapproval that Maya scoffs at before whispering, "She's never been the friendliest – not even when I was a child."

With a look over her features, Clara asks, "You were born here, weren't you."

"One of the first," Maya tells her quietly. "She's my mother," she nods to Sissy, who's rounding up the children and ushering them further into the caves, telling them to stop lollygagging at the _pretty girl_ and get to their learning.

"I'm _very_ sorry," Clara tells her bluntly with a frown.

She only waves it off, "I'm used to it. The children call her the Ice Governess when she's not near," she shrugs and sighs, "Really, she's just trying to protect us, doing the best she can."

Clara adjusts the two toddlers on her laps and turns to tell her that she could try to _smile_ every once in a while when there's a large bang on the front door, and then a second. She stands quickly, hugging both children to her as they stir and stare, wide eyed. Sissy comes running out into the open space, an odd gun in one hand and a spear in the other and she shouts at them to hide, but the door comes loose and in pour a group that effortlessly chase her down, remove the children, and stab her with a small sharp instrument that easily renders her unconscious.


	10. Savages and Salvages

He's working on finishing a magnetic system of pulleys to harness the smaller pulsing charges of the planet's gravitational field when he hears an odd shriek very _very_ far in the distance that stops him cold. The other men are either following instructions he's given them to re-wire the engines to work with the new ignition system, or they're standing guard outside, but none are reacting because none have heard it. Arm dropping away, rudimentary tool still gripped tightly in his hand, he steps away from the ship and towards the doors, feeling a trickle of ice work its way through his heart as he hears it again.

It's not merely a shriek, it's a word. A word that tumbles into a series of words that sends the tool clattering to the ground as he utters breathlessly, "Clara," and breaks into a run back towards the cave.

He can hear the commotion behind him as he continues moving, listening to the distant back and forth between men who congratulate themselves on the capture of the _space woman_. And then the forest goes silent. No words, no noises, not even the rustle of leaves – as though everything had frozen in time and space except for the Doctor, listening now to the pounding of his hearts as he tears through the foliage, feeling its branches scratch at his body through his shirt and leaves brush through his hair.

"CLARA!" He skids to an awkward stop at the entrance and sees the door ripped open, hears crying just inside and he steps in, Sonic raised, as he looks from face to face, scanning for disturbances – for weapons to halt. But there are none, just a ragged group of women and children and a few men who are nursing wounds.

Sissy is on the ground, a woman he presumes is her daughter is trying to wake her and the Doctor crouches, scanning her before telling her quickly, "She's alright. Sedative – a powerful one – _where is Clara_?"

Maya shakes her head as she looks up with red eyes and tells him, "They've never come here. Never, not ever. But they came in here… and they took her."

"They took Clara, _only Clara_?" He's perplexed, frustrated, angry.

_Enraged_, actually.

He looks to the children who are huddled together, comforting one another as they cry, and he feels the burn in his chest. But he's grateful they hadn't taken the children. They'd barely touched them, only frightened them with their barrage.

"Why?" He asks, standing and turning to find Dom entering. "Why take _Clara_? Why not take any of the others? You said they were savages; savages don't take hostages and leave survivors. They kill survivors. Why only take Clara?"

The man looks as perplexed as he feels and he turns, "Secure the door."

"_Nevermind the door_!" The Doctor roars. "Do you know where they are – where they congregate?"

Dom steps up to challenge him, "I know what you're thinking, Doctor, but your wife is gone. Best accept it and keep workin' on getting us off this planet." He lands a heavy hand on his shoulder, "We'll avenge her death, Doctor, I promise."

Smacking his hand away, the Doctor stares at him, nostrils flared slightly, and he tells him calmly, "Your ship is already calibrated to use the gravitational field of the planet to work up an ignition charge. When the pulse goes off tomorrow morning, the burst of additional energy that accompanies it will be sufficient to get you into orbit and you have enough fuel built up in the cells to take you to Quatar and organize your destructive retribution here. Work on choosing who stays and who goes – and I hope you've chosen to send the people confined to this room, because the trip there and back might take a while – and you stick with your hatred and your vengeance and you let it consume you," He pauses to take a breath and let a small grin spread over his lips. "I'm going to find Clara."

The man doesn't move, but the woman nearby on the ground stands and gives him a tentative touch before offering, "I'll come with you."

He smiles politely and shakes his head, "You have to care for your mother, for the children."

Walking back out into the dimming sunlight, the Doctor glances about, waiting until Dom is standing next to him to ask, "Where would they be?"

"We've never really gone looking for them."

Swiftly turning, he asks curiously, "They've killed your people – you said yourself – and you've never gone looking for them?"

"Generally they find us, out in the forest," Dom nods out into the dense trees. "We've been on their scent before and then they just show up."

"Pre-emptive strike," the Doctor understands. "They're not as primitive as you'd like to think."

"Not _savages_, not _primitives_…" Dom repeats, "Just what do _you_ think they are?"

He considers the question before allowing, "They've been on this planet a lot longer than any of these ships and they've done everything in their power to sabotage every ship that crashes, killing the majority of the inhabitants. Why allow you to survive?" He questions to Dom's shrug. "People. They need people."

"Then why haven't they come before?" Dom asks, looking out over the trees. "Why come in here and take just your wife?"

With a nod, he scans the tree line and begins walking, "They called her the _space woman_."

"What?"

Raising a hand in his direction, he shakes his head, "I could hear them," he tugs at one ear, "Great hearing and all and they called her the _space woman_ – but she's really no different from your…" he trails off. "What's the year?"

"What's the what?" Dom follows closely and holds tight to a spear in one hand, resting the other on a gun at his waist.

The Doctor stops, "What year is this?"

"What do you mean the year? Have you gone mad?"

"Just tell me the year!" He shouts in frustration, closing his eyes and then clenching his jaw as he waits.

"Sixty nine ninety three."

"You've been travelling to the stars," the Doctor smiles, "And the human race is nothing if not prolifically naughty." He gestures, "To them you're tainted with the blood of aliens. But you're a pure enough alternative and you're clever, clever enough to hide your ship and survive the planet – the wolves – so you live. You're allowed to survive and procreate because one day they might need you because you'll do."

Dom jumps over a log the Doctor trips over. "Not sure I appreciate what you're insinuating.

"These people could very well be the first humans who crashed on this planet; they could be from a thousand years ago and have 'evolved' into these so-called savages through necessity. They could be playing at the same game you're playing at – the _savage_ man is to be feared," the Doctor tells him quickly. "Or they could simply be beings who can sense the impurity of your bloodlines and Clara is an untainted source of human genetics."

"So?" Dom spits.

The Doctor turns and tells him blankly, "So she'd make a good mother."

There's the dripping of water coming from someplace nearby and it echoes through her mind as she comes to, blinking widely against the darkness until she's absolutely sure she's staring up at the inside of another cave. And for a moment she's relieved because she thinks maybe she's been saved – someone was able to stop the men from taking her away! But then she tries to move and finds she's been bound to a bed of straw and leaves, her hands tied tightly above her head; ankles to a post just beyond her feet.

"She's awake," someone growls.

Clara closes her eyes.

"No sense in hiding, we know you're awake," they tell her.

She peeks up at the dark face that's looming over hers and she swallows, squishing the last of her blurry vision away with two final blinks before asking, "Where am I?"

"Home," she's told.

Clara nods. "Not even close."

He reaches up and begins pressing at her arm and she shouts in protest, but is quickly silenced as a hand reaches down quickly and grips her face within rough fingers. "This will all be easier if you stay still."

"What will be easier?" She asks in a shaky mumble through squished cheeks.

Not answering, he raises what looks like a needle to the crook of her arm and begins to draw a vial of blood and Clara remains absolutely still save for the wince she gives the action. When he's done, he steps away and a trickle of crimson rolls over her pale skin. The man moves away from her and she watches him as he nears what looks like a rudimentary lab, taking her blood to machines that begin to beep and whir as he punches the buttons and scribbles something down on a piece of paper.

Clara can see the fur skins piled up in a corner and she looks for any other beings, but she's alone with this man now and he's making noises of approval. He uses a dropper to place a drop of her blood in a machine and it hums as he waits. With a small shake of her head, Clara shouts, "What the hell is going on here?"

He chuckles, "Pure human."

"Of course I'm pure human," she spits at him. "I'm from Earth."

"Hmph," he grunts curiously, looking at the results on a faded green computer screen.

"What _hmph_?"

"Very pure human," he tells the machine, turning to give her a look. "I haven't seen human this pure… ever – where are you from?"

"Earth," Clara repeats.

He approaches her and begins to check various parts of her body unceremoniously as she struggles against the unwanted assault. "No tags, no barcodes – where were you made?"

"_Made_?" Clara shouts as he leans back to look at her. "I was _born_, not _made_."

"Impossible," he spits.

"I get that a lot," she growls back. "What do you want with me?" She demands.

He steps back and presses a few keys on a flat board just beneath the monitor and then looks back at her and tells her bluntly, "Your blood."


	11. Visitors

The Doctor scans at the ground and then listens to their surroundings. He clenches his jaw and looks back at Dom, who's peering out into the darkness and he knows what he's thinking – they've voluntarily gone out into the forest at a time when the wolves would be out looking for food. But if they're out there, they're being incredibly silent, the Doctor knows. He looks at his Sonic and continues walking forward, feeling Dom joining him at his side, careful to step lightly as the Doctor trudges on.

"That stick thingy tell you where she is?" Dom asks quietly.

Shaking his head, he smiles sadly and says, "No, no Clara sensor…" then he furrows his brow and considers it. Companion detector, could be useful when they get kidnapped… or run off like children to look at shiny things thinking he's watching them. And then he considers it again and scans Dom.

"Oy!" The man shouts.

"Trying to get a reading on you."

"Point your glowing stick at someone else if you don't want a face full of fist!"

Ignoring him, he explains, "I've got a scan of the wolves and a scan of you, and I've scanned humans before," he searches, "I can eliminate those readings and focus on anything that doesn't match."

"How will that find your wife?"

He smiles as he growls, "I'll find the men who've taken her."

"D'you really reckon they've taken her for… breeding purposes?" Dom asks delicately, shifting slightly away from the Doctor to wait for the response.

With a sigh, the Doctor shrugs and his eyebrows are knotted so tightly together they burn. He hasn't tried to think about it because he doesn't want to, but he absolutely sure it has to do with the fact that she'd be different – genetically – from anyone else on this planet, or anyone who's crashed in the past thousand or so years.

"Perhaps," he allows. "Perhaps, there's something else. An antibody they no longer have, or a virus they'd like to cull, or any other number of genetic anomalies that would lie within the blood of a pure human like Clara – something that would have been missing for many generations now – that sits, tantalizingly, in her veins."

"Then why not you?"

"Not human," he replies without hesitation.

Looking him over, Dom asks, "But how? I mean, you haven't seen 'em like we have. They're filthy, don't speak much of anything, and only seem adept at killing and eating."

"They're not what you think," the Doctor assures him.

"Supposin' they're not _savages_ and not _primitive_," he repeats from before, and then he asks, "Why is it you think they're not really what they make themselves out to be."

Turning, he gestures at the fur that still covers the man's pants, "This planet seems to have a penchant for bringing out the role players in all of us."

Dom smirks and asks, "That mean you and your wife aren't what you seem either."

With a sly smile, the Doctor scans out into the forest. "My Tardis – my ship – do you remember where she was?"

Understanding that the other man had avoided his question, Dom points out to their right, "About a mile in that direction, though I don't see what we're gonna do with a blue box."

"Didn't get a look at the inside, did you?" The Doctor questions.

"Got near her and she made a noise like you wouldn't imagine," Dom tells him with a grimace. "What's on the inside?"

He smiles, "A lot more than you think."

Clara is left alone, which is probably not the best thing because while the man had been in the room, she could concentrate on what he's doing and she could assure herself that he wasn't going to kill her because he kept making sounds and muttering to himself about her _humanity_. Now that he's gone, she's left to wonder. What had he gone to get? Were there others? Had he gone to get others? What was in her blood? Were they going to take it out? Was it actually harmful to her? _How were they going to take it out_?

"Hello?" She calls out, hearing the word echo as it bounces off the cave walls. "Hello!"

She hears footsteps, light and quick, and is surprised to find a young boy of about seven years old coming towards her, a small smile on his thin lips as he comes to stand beside her. He stares at her a moment through long dark locks, a look of wonder on his pale freckled face as his light eyes dart over her features. Then he frowns and shifts away and she struggles to keep him in her line of sight as he ducks away.

When he pops back up, he has a wet rag in his hand and he's tenderly wiping at the blood on her arm, throwing her an exaggerated smile, as though he wanted to make sure she understood he was simply cleaning what he presumed was a wound. He finishes and searches her skin with soft fingers and seems pleased with himself as she watches him.

"Hi," she finally says.

"Hi," he repeats.

"What's your _name_?" Clara asks quietly.

He considers the question, then points at himself and says, "Micah."

"Micah," she says approvingly, "I'm Clara."

The boy moves a box over and he climbs atop it to look more closely at her face, cupping his palms at her cheeks to squish them slightly before giggling and then tracing her features. He slides his forefingers over her eyebrows and then pokes at her nose before trying to get a look at her teeth. "Clara pretty," he finally says with a nod and a reddening of his face.

"Micah kind," she tells him, then looks up, "Micah untie me, please?"

He swallows, looking nervous as he turns to search the room before whispering, "Clara stay."

"Micah, am I in danger?"

Moving closer to her, he whispers at her ear, "Clara safe. Micah here."

Then he gives her an odd nuzzle of affection and moves away, rushing back out and she's not sure she should call after him. She lays her head back down, perplexed. Who was he? Why was he there? What was wrong with him? Obviously a boy of his age should be speaking better than two word sentences. What did he have to do with the…

"I'm going to have to take more blood," comes a voice from the door – the man from before – and Clara frowns at him, distracted as she looks beyond him towards the darkness of the caves beyond this one. "What are you looking for?"

She looks towards him and asks, "What do you need my blood for?"

He rubs the bridge of his nose and moves closer to her, looking down at the box at the bedside before glancing out of the small area and nodding, "Micah was in here."

Clara swallows, unsure, but she allows, "Yes."

The man, surprisingly, smiles, and sits with a sigh. "When did you land here?"

"I _crashed_ here yesterday."

He raises another needle to her arm and she hisses when he stabs at her skin. "Crashed," he says with a nod before withdrawing the needle and rolling away. "Must have been what they were going on about – blue box?"

There's blood on her arm again and she feels light headed this time. "What do you want my blood for?"

He turns to look at her. "Where are you from?"

"Earth," she tells him.

He shakes his head, "New Earth?"

"No, _just_ Earth," she grunts. "You don't happen to have something to drink?"

Another man steps into the room and tells him, "They're getting restless. Some chatter about a strange man with a glowing stick."

"He's coming," Clara laughs, relaxing slightly. "And you are _so in trouble_."

"Who's coming?"

"Man I crashed with? Not keen on my being kidnapped – he's not into that sort of thing. Like's a peaceful encounter, but that glowing stick? Can destroy all of your computers and we'll just prance off because we've got a sunset to get…"

He stands and walks out of the room before she can finish and she frowns, exhaling sharply. The Doctor gets a good speech in every so often, why couldn't she? Clara tugs on the restraints on her wrists and feels the ropes burning at her skin, but she writhes anyways. She bites down against the pain and pulls, but she's stopped short when she hears a small growl.

It's familiar in a way that shouldn't be and she turns hesitantly to peer over her arm at the overgrown wolf that enters the room slowly and drops a purple suit jacket onto the ground. Clara can feel her heart frozen in her chest and her eyes look to the entranceway, hoping someone else would be coming in, but there's no one there – just the animal that's leisurely approaching her.

And then it lunges.


	12. Origin Point

The Doctor gives a shout of joy and rushes forward, landing against the rough wood with a clunk as he gives the Tardis a quick hug and then straightens, testing her exterior with a set of strokes that has the man standing a few feet away giving him an awkward look. The Tardis responds by lighting up her beacon and allowing a door to swing open so that he can jump inside, landing shakily with a grin and a straightening of his bow tie before he heads to the console to check on her status.

"Hello, sexy," he smiles, hand sliding over the metal before he pops a button and swings the screen closer to run schematics. "Oh, you've been busy!" He tells her, then calls, "Dom, it would be prudent for you to hop inside and close the door."

Dom moves slowly towards the blue box that's lying on its side and he glances in, staring at the man who's upright despite the outer shell's condition and in a room that's far too large despite the outer shell's appearance. "What is this ship?" He asks.

"Tardis. Get in."

He climbs carefully over the edge and drops inside only to land on his backside, "Gravity correction?"

"Oh, that's just the easy stuff," the Doctor teases.

"She's so much bi…"

"…Bigger on the inside," the Doctor finishes. "I know. Tell me she's cool."

Dom only stares around, jumping when the door behind him swings shut roughly. He pulls himself to his feet and approaches the console, setting his spear down against the railing to look at the assortment of navigational controls around the center spire. "What is this ship?" He repeats.

The Doctor turns with a grin, "Tardis. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, and she's mine. All of space; all of time, anywhere and everywhere and we crash landed here because of the gravity pulse this planet emitted."

"And Clara, your wife, she travels with you?" Dom asks, gesturing at the small blue blazer hanging on the railing.

He cocks his head sideways and says hesitantly, "Eh, we travel together, but she's not really my wife – at least she's currently _refusing_ to be," he finishes with a grunt of frustration before smiling up at Dom. "She's repairing, still got a few hours before flight, but, she can tell me what I need to know," he plugs his Sonic into a slot that pops open and types furiously as Dom glances about.

"How big is she?"

"Big," the Doctor says absently, "Largest ship times the largest ship." He moves the screen again and makes a noise of confusion. "All that's here are humans."

Dom grasps the railing next to Clara's jacket, "Those things are human. I mean, I know you thought maybe they _were_, but they _are_?"

The Doctor types more, "They are, but… this can't be right."

"What can't be right?" Dom moves closer to him.

"Humans, everything, even the wolves are scanning as hu…" he looks to Dom, "Mutations, hybrids of a sort."

"The wolves are human?"

"The wolves _were_ human, they still record as remnants," the Doctor corrects, "The humans have mutated. What would cause a mutation of this severity that still scans as human? What is on this planet? And _what would Clara_ have?"

Dom shrugs, "You said she was more pure than we were."

"Humanity," he smiles. "Anti-virus."

"It's a virus?" Dom asks, then shakes his head, "Wait, what's a virus?"

"The wolves were human," he tells Dom, raising a hand to point, "The wolves were human and they crash landed here and got infected. It's not airborne and it hasn't infected your group – was anyone injured when you crashed, that survived?"

"No, no, there were no real injuries aside from the deaths."

"No injuries since?"

Dom shakes his head. "No, we've been pretty careful knowing we don't have much by way of medical help out here."

"There must have been some point of origin," the Doctor growls before turning to the screen and typing again, "Something to cause the mutation. I came across something like this once before, a lycanthrope parasite that could turn a human into a werewolf – this could be a similar strand – and it infects, _but how_? Theoretically, if it's not airborne, it's through contact. Mostly contact with bodily fluids, a bite from the infected causes a contagion, but what caused the first?"

"Not sure I follow," Dom tells him honestly.

Moving to him and clasping his hands on the other man's shoulders, he explains, "Origin point. Patient zero. First of the infected. How did they get infected?" Then he points, "Crash landings on the planet. Humans crash land, they survive off the smaller animals in the forest – _but it didn't come from them or you'd be infected _– and then something else crash lands. Origin point. The virus lands and infects the first human. The humans are slowly turned into wolves – first they go mad; the incubation period, the rags and the de-evolved speech and the _madness_. They kill anything not like them because the virus is telling them to, but the human part of them fights back, it destroys the ships so they can't get off-planet."

"So they're still human under the fur?" Dom asks.

The Doctor steps away, considering, "Anything can be fought off, including a mutational virus, especially if you have the science…" he spins back, "The medical bays. The ships have medical bays, if anyone who crashes manages to get ahold of Nano-bots before they transform, they could stop the process – they could find the trigger and they could reverse it, but they'd have to find other people. Untainted humans from a time before yours."

"I'm not following again. Only other people, besides us, are the insane blokes in the woods."

"Process must take years, maybe prolonging their lives, and in their madness they could still form bonds, could still procreate – just as you've done. Two groups surviving apart from one another, but there's a third, hidden from both, a third that's cured itself and is looking to find a way to cure the others. A third that needs Clara." He snaps. "Nano-bots."

"What?"

"She'd still have Nano-bots! _And_ she's the untainted source."

"Why's she _untainted_? And why's she got Nano-bots?" Dom questions.

"She's twentieth century," and to his look, the Doctor gestures to the Tardis, "Time Travel, I picked her up in 2013, we've been travelling around for a while." He sighs, "Second question – we crashed, she was injured, I found some still-active Nano-bots and healed her. We ran into wolves, or wolves ran into us, and that's how we ended up in the catacombs where you found us, or we found you – it's all not really important. What is is, they might not want to hurt her."

"If they haven't gone mad trying to cure themselves," Dom points out.

The Doctor gives him a scowl, "Let's focus on the positive, shall we?"

There's a hint of a smirk on the other man's face, "So how do we save your Clara?"

He turns when the monitor begins to blink and his Sonic pops back out, "We track her, but first, we save the planet."

The Doctor toggles a lever and there's a rumble and he smiles as the Tardis uprights itself and then he rushes around, pushing a button and yanking on a knob and Dom watches as he moves below the console and comes back up with a bucket, thrusting it into Dom's arms. "What?" He starts, but the Doctor is gone again, typing and moving about the console with a gleeful grin and a swing of his arms and then he rushes past him, dropping a small blinking red device into a large blue bucket before heading to the front doors. He opens them wide and reaches up for a small button concealed along the edge of the door's frame.

"Hold tight to that bucket," he allows before pushing the button and Dom can feel a boom rattle the Tardis and sees a wave of white light flash out through the forest.

He takes a step forward and is about to ask a question when suddenly there's a rush of wind, or at least he thinks it's wind. It swirls around him as he hugs the bucket in his arms and watches a tornado beginning to form in front of him and the Doctor is laughing, standing aside and giving it a clap of his hands. Dom shakes his head in confusion and then glances down into the bucket to see a substance is forming. It's like sand, but grey, and it swirls slightly as he stares.

"Nano-bot reunion!" The Doctor cries. "One big happy family," he shouts as he moves to watch them collect until the bucket is full, overflowing, and Dom has to set it on the ground to watch them continue to gather. "One very big happy family," the Doctor tells him with a quick grab of his arm, obviously pleased.

Dom gestures down at the bucket and the last wisps of wind that are swirling atop it and he asks wide-eyed, "How many Nano-bots is that?"

"Millions?" The Doctor tells him with an amused shrug of his shoulders. "Billions?" He then bends next to it, "All of the undamaged Nano-bots, electro-shocked back into animation, from dozens of shipwrecks for a fifty mile radius – hopefully it'll be enough."

"Enough to what?"

"Destroy whatever's turning people in wolves, save your people, save the planet," he smiles confidently and stands, "Save Clara."


	13. A Dog and His Boy

Clara is barely able to let out a scream before the beast is atop her and lapping vigorously at her face with a thick wet tongue. She cringes, eyes shut and heart pounding with fear, holding her mouth closed. She lets out a quick mumbled noise of protest as the wolf lays down its weight on her and settles, still cleaning her neck before laying its head at her chest. She opens her eyes and glances down at the dog that's giving her eyes of its own, waiting.

"Not eating me," she sighs, "Guess that's good."

Micah enters quickly and frowns, "Down!" He hisses.

"Your dog?" Clara asks quickly.

The boy smiles proudly and the wolf groans.

"Well your dog attacked me earlier," she informs him sternly to a look of confusion as he swipes hair out of his eyes. "Get him off me!"

"Down!" Micah insists and the dog raises its head and then stands, giving a rough shake of its head, as though it were displeased with the command. And then it takes a step forward and lowers its jaws to the rope, gnawing and tugging. Clara smiles up at him, understanding that despite the rugged pulls to her wrists, the wolf is actually cutting her free. She allows a laugh when the rope slips off and the dog hops to the ground, waiting obediently by Micah for her to sit up and undo the knot at her ankles.

"Thank you," she tells them both in a hushed voice, dropping off the table and taking a few steps towards this room's entrance, stopping in front of the computer to look at what's sitting there.

_Human Female. Approximately twenty to twenty five years of age. Note purity of blood specimen and existence of trace amounts of Nano-bot technology, neither consistent with 63__rd__ century. Blood pre-dates 26__rd__ century inoculation standards and still contains remnants of bacterium from_…

The boy tugs on her sore wrist and she turns to look as he urges her to continue moving.

Clara turns back to the monitor.

…_Nano-bot extraction possible with low dose electric shock and recalibration. Could be used to salvage more planetary specimens; blood could be secondary means of creating anti-bodies, or plausible primary means of restoring the mutated. Possible natural immunity due to inexplicable dating of specimen's origins_…

"Clara, run," the boy tells her, hand patting impatiently at her waist.

She shushes him.

…_Blood extraction for purification of mutations could result in death of subject if synthetic compound cannot be achieved with technology currently available_…

"Clara!"

"Blood extraction my arse," she tells the computer, turning to take the boy's hand and begin to head down the darkened cave, dog at the lead. Clara listens intently, but something tells her the boy at her side, gripping her hand tightly, has better hearing as he's darting his head back and forth, not unlike the dog ahead of them. "What happened to you?" She whispers.

"Bad bite," he tells her, "Man fix."

"Man, the man who had me in the room? Micah?"

He turns and nods. "Man fix, man not right," he taps his head. "Can't fix all."

"So he's gone mad trying to heal everyone, but he can't," she surmises to his nod, "And he thinks he can find something he doesn't have in my blood – something that hasn't been taken away by inoculations and evolution," she continues.

"And he'd be right," the man tells her blankly from behind her, shocking her and the boy and causing the dog to jump in front of them, growling angrily, but keeping his distance. "He'd be right to know there's something about you that's different, that's necessary to the survival of everyone that's crash landed on this planet."

Clara shakes her head, "But you can't cure everyone on this planet," then she asks, "How many are on this planet?"

He smiles, steps out from the cavern he'd been inside and raises a small device towards the wolf that causes it to step away. Some sort of Taser that Clara is keen enough to steer clear of. "Thousands have been infected, who knows how many have been born after infection," he rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and then drops his palm open in front of them, "You could help me cure them."

She shakes her head, "I read your notes – you doubt you have what you need to cure them without killing me and I'm sorry, _I'm very sorry_, but I'm not _quite_ ready to die."

"Then you're selfish," the man accuses. "Look at Micah. That boy was cured…"

"Cured?" Clara cries, "He can barely speak!"

Micah frowns and tells her with a touch to his head, "Scrambled eggs."

Eyes darting to his sullen face, she grips his hand tightly in hers and takes a quick breath to hiss, "RUN!"

The dog barks madly and jumps at the man and Clara hears a loud zap and crackle accompanied by a sickening howl as she moves with Micah through the caves. For a moment she feels horrible for the wolf, but she doesn't think on it more than that because she can hear his footsteps pounding against the ground behind them. Clara feels Micah tug and they enter a side cavern and she holds her breath a moment as the lights dim to a point where she can't see anything and for what feels like eternity, they're drenched in darkness.

"Micah?" She calls, feeling him squeezing her palm and continuing forward and then they're bathed in moonlight, a cool breeze freezing the sweat she hadn't noticed was peppering her body.

The boy looks back to her, surprise and excitement dancing over his features, reminiscent of the man she's desperately missing, and they make their way past familiar tall rock formations towards a forest that seems too quiet and too dark. They leap over a downed tree and Micah pulls her to the floor, dragging her underneath the large trunk and behind a curtain of foliage as they listen, trying to control their breathing.

Clara crouches and holds him closer to her. Micah climbs into her lap, looking up through the gaps in the vines and leaves for the man who's slowed his steps and is muttering under his breath. He curses and looks out over the trees and then he turns back and Clara edges up, but Micah lays a hand at her collar, giving her a shake of his head and she understands – it could be a trap. She nods and they go back to watching and waiting, listening for cracks in the branches and the rustle of leaves that indicate he's heading back towards the rocks.

"What did he do to you?" Clara asks, hands coming up to either side of Micah's face to turn it in her direction. She feels an unexpected rage building inside of her at the idea that this boy had been experimented on, but he only smiles at her.

"Tried to help," he offers. "Fix the wolf."

"Wolf, I don't understand," she tells him honestly, fingers stroking his hair away from his face, behind his small ears and she lets one hand rest on his shoulder as the other cups his cheek. "What happened to you?"

"Born here," he sighs against her touch. "Mum dead; dad dead. Wolves. Bites make man mad." He lifts an arm and shows her the old scar on his arm. "Bite make wolf."

She thinks she understands and it terrifies her because she's seen this horror movie before and she's not particularly open to getting turned into a wolf herself. That might be worse than being eaten. She shudders involuntarily and her hands slip away from his face and shoulders, dropping to his elbows.

"Sleep," she tells him. "Tomorrow we'll look for a man, the Doctor; he's out in the forest right now looking for me." She smiles as he shifts and nestles against her. "He'll know what to do."

At least, she hopes he will.

He scans at the air and pushes his lips together, wanting nothing more than to call out to her, but knowing if there were wolves, that would be the most dangerous thing he could do. He also knows the chances of her being out in the open where she could even hear him were slim. So he continues on as silently as he can, aware that his oversized feet were making more noise than he could hear with his ears – noise an animal could detect to help it hunt, and he supposes he's been made a long time ago, but they're keeping their distance.

The Sonic gives off a small beep and he moves in that direction, finding himself nearing the spot where they'd first run into Dom. Finding it curious, he crouches to look at the ground around him. There doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, but it's no coincidence he's ended up there.

"Hmph," he allows, scanning the yellow rocks that are dotting the space in front of him, trying to discern what it was about them that makes the wolves keep at bay, but what he reads isn't the rocks, it's something underneath them. "Cables," he whispers. "Someone's cooking," he smiles.

And then he hits the ground under the weight of something small and rough that screeches and pummels a set of small hard fists at him in rapid succession. It isn't powerful, but it's persistent, and he raises his hands to his face against the assault, getting glimpses of what looks like a small wild boy straddling his chest.

He tries to shield himself from the small arms and starts to try to explain himself, but the small person screams at him and he hears a noise of surprise coming from a few feet away. The Sonic is slapped away as soon as he raises it and there's a growling sound, but it's not from a wolf, it's from a human, and he shouts, alarmed before he hears another voice call out.

"No, Micah, no!"

It's clear in the quiet and he stops defending himself only to get one good punch in the face that leaves him seeing stars. "Clara?" He manages, hands grasping his burning nose, and the small fists are gone, replaced by cold hands that touch his face and grab at his to get a look at his injury. And then she's gone, the delicate touches leaving ghost impressions on his skin.

"No, Micah, it's alright!" He hears her say from nearby.

"What?" The Doctor whispers, sitting up and shuffling away to look back at the woman knelt down in the grass holding a small boy at bay. The boy bares teeth at him and he bares his back a moment before Clara turns and then his grin is involuntary as he reaches for his Sonic. "Hello," he tells her quietly.

Clara smiles, shifting back in his direction and her whole body sighs.

And then she lands a quick punch into his shoulder.


	14. Free and Captured

Shouting out, he shifts away from her, bringing himself back to his feet as she gets to hers and she approaches, face furrowed in anger, "_You_, you always talking about _not wandering off_, and you leave, and you left me with those people who weren't prepared to defend themselves, or their guests, and…" she stops, "_Oh, my Stars_, are they alright? Are the _children_ alright?"

Her hands are at her chest, waiting for his nod before her face shifts again, back into a scowl of wrath that shocks him, "And _you do_ know what's happened? I've been kidnapped by some lunatic who wants to bleed me dry to stop some insane werewolf plague on this planet and I was tied to a table getting blood drawn and you, _you_…"

Stepping forward, he grabs her and pulls her into a hug and for a moment she melts into it and he smiles, glad to be done with the tirade – partly because anything after them would definitely hear them, but mostly because he doesn't like when she yells at him – but then she pushes him off and she steps back. The boy, Micah, moves to her side, hand slipping into hers and the Doctor gestures at him.

"New friend?" He asks hesitantly.

Micah growls.

The Doctor grows serious and holds out a hand, "Clara, the boy is dangerous."

"_He_ saved me. He's not dangerous," she tells him with a frown. "He was infected and partly cured."

"He could still be dangerous," he sighs, touching his nose as Micah gives a slight mischievous grin that the Doctor responds to with an appalled face before he decides the antics of the boy weren't important in the grand scheme of things. What was going on; how to save everyone – that was. "Where did you come from; where was he holding you – were there others?"

Clara shakes her head and gives him a sideways look, "Oh no, I know what you're thinking and we're not. Absolutely not."

"I haven't even…"

"You want to go in there, Sonic blazing, and _talk_ to them." Clara shakes her head again and tells him bluntly, "They're bonkers, mad, insane – maybe a bit infected by the thing they're trying to cure! Big screaming amount of _'Clara, get away from the crazies'_ back there!"

He smiles at her ferocity because it's past the point of frightening him now that she's done pummeling him. Bending slightly, he reminds her, "Clara, I can't help if I don't engage at some point."

"Well _engage_ without me," she allows, pulling up Micah's hand and moving past the Doctor, "Point me in the direction of the Tardis."

The Doctor raises a hand towards her and warns, "It's not safe in the forest."

"It's not safe in that cave," she turns to tell him, stopping and gripping Micah to herself.

She's standing there sheltering the small boy – a new charge – and the Doctor smiles, allowing the pause to consider her: she's actually more concerned about the half-wolf boy than herself in a forest full of wolves and mad men all intent on either eating her or capturing her. She would make a _fantastic_ mother. He drops his head, hand coming up to rub at his brow and he approaches her, touching her cheek lightly and receiving a low guttural noise from the boy.

"Clara, please," he pleads, "Stay by my side."

"Doctor, I am afraid," she admits, "Very afraid and I'd like to be someplace safe."

He takes her other hand and nods, "By my side."

She eyes him, considering the pained features that are begging her and she understands that as afraid as she is of going back, he's even more afraid of her leaving again and she relents, looking to Micah, who doesn't understand. "Stay close," she tells the boy, who nods and grips her hand within both of his.

A sigh of relief escaping his lips, the Doctor turns back to the spires of light rock just beyond the trees and he explains, "The humans who have been turned to wolves fear this place not because of anything in particular about the structures or the location, but because they are – despite their previous human state – still wolves, affected by their senses and those very senses are disturbed by the electrical currents being channeled through the tunnels I presume are beneath this place."

"He had a computer, some lab equipment," Clara whispers.

With a nod, the Doctor scans the ground again, "His ship must have crashed nearby. Somehow he was able to transport his equipment. Other survivors from his ship – had to be one helluva ship to keep the wolves at bay." He has an odd thought before telling her, "Possibly he was infected with the virus from the start and was able to slow its progress…"

"The old man," Micah tells them both. "Older than rocks," he adds with a small nod.

"The virus can't mutate a human overnight, it needs time," the Doctor supplies, "So it prolongs a life. So long as someone is infected, they won't age naturally – it's possible they won't age at all." He laughs quietly. "Immortality virus."

"Wolf virus," Clara corrects. "With bite-y teeth." Then she asks, "How do you plan to stop it?"

He taps the Sonic to a small device he removes from his pocket, placing it in his ear and giving it a buzz before asking, "Dom, are you still there?"

The man shouts out in response from where he waits in the Tardis, alarmed by the loud and sudden voice that booms through the main chamber and he calls out pointedly, "Still here in your box, Doctor."

"I've found Clara, we've taken on a small feral child, _apparently_, and we're on our way to the mad scientist's lair," he says with a raised eyebrow and a grin to Clara. Then he adds, "Wait for my word to open the doors."

"Gotcha," comes the quick response.

Turning to Clara he explains, "I've collected all airborne Nano-bots, I just need to know what he's working at, possibly get a scan of the pure virus, and then the Nano-bots can be programmed to fix everyone."

"He did want the Nano-bots in my blood – which you said should have been sneezed out."

"Well, there were probably millions in you, might take a bit before you expel them completely."

She makes a sickened face, "So you lied,"

"I _always_ lie," he admits. "But it was to make you feel better."

Clara points a finger, "Not being told I had, _have_, programmable Nano-bots in my body that could be used in whatever way a controller wants, including turning my internal organs into soup… _not_ making me feel better."

Raising his hands to her, he groans, "And this is why I _lied_!"

"Quiet," Micah warns, reaching out to tug the Doctor down with himself and Clara and they all look out to see what he's detected and see a group of men walking slowly towards them.

They seem to be communicating amongst each other and the Doctor can make out a word here and there, muttered, and much like the boy's speech, he realizes – previously infected, but 'cured'. He looks to Clara when he hears them refer to the space woman again, and then he turns back when she finally meets his eye and easily reads his expression.

"Looking for me, aren't they?" She starts to hiss.

Micah cups a hand over her mouth before she can finish.

He silences his Sonic and aims it in their direction, trying to scan, but they're too far away and there are too many trees in the way. Clenching his jaw, he tries to amplify the settings before he grunts and stands, waving his arms in the air and shouting, "Hello! Hello, I'm the one making the ruckus – the one you're searching for!"

"Doctor!" Clara shouts and Micah puts a fist into the back of his knee that brings him back down to the ground with a scowl at the boy.

"You've really got to work on your bedside manner," he tells the boy.

Micah grabs at Clara and starts to pull her away from the Doctor and she manages to get on her feet, trying to pull him back because if the Doctor doesn't want them to leave, it's probably best they don't. Clara struggles with Micah for a moment before he turns and complains, "Mummy, run!" His head shakes as he catches himself and repeats, "Run, Clara!"

She eyes him sadly and shakes her head at him, watching the defeat spread over his face as she holds him in place. The men are coming at them and the Doctor stands, reaching out and taking hold of Clara's arm and he tells her blankly, "It's no use anyways," as he glances up and nods towards the forest.

Micah continues to tug gently, but Clara can see what the Doctor has noticed and she stops the boy and turns him, forcing him to look up to see the pack of wolves pacing between the trees. "No more running, Micah," she tells him quietly, feeling the trembling in her own chest.

He looks up at her and his face is red as he searches her and Clara understands, he'd lost his parents the same way, had probably watched it happen, and as he looks from Clara to the Doctor, he doesn't comprehend why they'd succumb to the same fate.

"_Run_," he manages to squeak.

"We've surrendered," the Doctor shouts.

"No, Run!" Micah screams.

The Doctor presses a hand into his shoulder and bends slightly to tell the boy quietly, "We'll run, don't you worry. Right now, let's be brave. Can you be brave, Micah?" He glances up, "For Clara, can you be brave?"

He shifts away from the man who straightens and he nods.

"Bring me the woman – she's the key. Kill the spares," comes the cry from just behind the men and they watch as the men and the wolves advance from either side and Clara understands the spares to mean the Doctor and Micah and she runs forward, towards the man.

"NO!" She shouts, "_The Doctor can save you all_!"

But neither the wolves, nor the men stop running and she looks to the Doctor, who's now holding Micah at his side, trying to decide what to do. She closes her eyes, trying not to imagine the gnashing teeth and the sharp claws and she runs towards the wolves as both man and boy scream because she knows it's the only way to stop the onslaught – putting herself in danger. Clara jumps in the way of the first oncoming beast and while it tries to avoid her, she ends up colliding with it and the two go tumbling to the ground.

And the forest goes silent.


	15. The Scientist and the Storm Cloud

Her teeth are locked tightly in her jaw against the pain in her chest and shoulder and she doesn't open her eyes as she listens to the wolf that whines over her and then backs away, knowing what it had done was wrong. Behind her is a chorus of shouts, the Doctor and Micah screaming her name as they run to her, and the man who'd wanted her blood hollering out at everyone to move away from her. She gives a sigh because she was right, stopping a madman would take an act of madness.

Clara's dress is soaking, sticking to her body in a way that makes her stomach turn and she's getting faint when she feels the Doctor skid to a stop on his knees beside her. His hand touches her face lightly before he buzzes the Sonic over her, his breath ragged.

"Sorry… a bit broken again," she hisses.

"No. No, Clara, not broken," he tells her with a half laugh that's shaking with nerves.

Micah is crying.

She can make it out faintly, and she opens her eyes to look up at his face as he stands solemnly beside the Doctor, hands curled up under his chin, in shock. Clara chances a peek down at the harsh bite at her her shoulder and can see the ragged slashes of a set of wolf claws that work their way across the top of her chest. She closes her eyes and laughs painfully.

"What have you done!" The man bellows as he grabs the Doctor's shoulder and attempts to yank him back, trying to move him away from Clara.

Instead, what he accomplishes is enraging the Doctor, who stands swiftly and grabs him roughly by his shirt, backing him straight into a tree. "What have _you_ done?" He shouts into his face, then composes himself, glowering at the man in front of him. "What is this place? Who are you? What have you done to these people?"

The man's eyes widen as he explains, "I'm a scientist, a scientist that was banished a long time ago for daring to take something that fell from the stars and try to use it."

He unclenches his jaw and growls, "Use _it_? Use _what_?"

The man swallows, sweat forming at his brow. "A meteor that contained a virus that ate up a person and left a wolf – a wolf that lived forever." He smiles, then laughs manically, "A healthy, happy wolf."

The Doctor gives his body another painful slam against the rough bark behind him to break him from his delirium and he mutters, "You tinkered, trying to separate out the immortality from the virus."

"And I thought it worked," he laughs.

Micah drops next to Clara to hold her hand and she ignores the searing jolt the movement sends up her torn shoulder to smile up at him, telling him quietly, "Don't worry, Micah. Everything will be fine."

The Doctor looks to her, softening as she grins up for him as well – always stronger than she should be, he knows – and he lowers his head, turning back to the man in his grasp. "This planet isn't a planet," he tells him. "It looks like a planet and it works like one, but at its core is a laboratory – a space ship – spinning on an axis to maintain gravity, working up a charge much larger than it needs." He closes his eyes against the realization, "You never crashed here; you created here, the expulsions of excess energy create the shipwrecks that give you subjects – new experiments to continue your work."

"I was supposed to float away into the stars and die, but instead the gravity mechanism malfunctioned, started pulling in bits here and there from space and eventually it grew into what it is," the man admits. "It became a planet, became an atmosphere. And then it started pulling in people. Other ships."

"How long have you been here?" The Doctor asks curiously. "That sort of thing doesn't happen in few thousand years, it doesn't happen in a hundred thousand years…"

He raises an arm, shows off a slash of his own. "The meteor infected dozens, hundreds, but we didn't know what was happening until months later and by then it seemed an epidemic of insane people… until the wolf inside broke free. After a time, we managed to cut the head off the beast: managed to slow the transformation in the infected, and I managed to cure it – but the cost was the immortality. All that was left was a wolf with a wolf's life span, or an inept human – another burden on an already strapped society."

"What are you?" The Doctor scans him and pushes off to look at the readings, closing his eyes when a sob escapes Clara's lips and when he looks down at her he sees she's trying to hold it in because she knows he has to fix _this_ – not _her_. "Time traveler," he manages before looking back at the man. "They banished you back in time, a practice which stopped when they finally got around to thinking about how dangerous it could be." He shifts his jaw and asks again, "Who are you?"

He smiles weakly then, telling him plainly, "My name is Doctor Robert Samson, and I'm three billion years away from my life. A life I'd really love to live long enough to get back to."

Rubbing a hand over his face, the Doctor turns to look at Samson, "This atmosphere wasn't just created, you created it – your ship would have terraforming capabilities with some modifications, it would take a few hundred years to get it perfected. So you've managed to hone the immortality," he turns, "The boy said you were as old as the rocks."

"I've managed to cull the immortality, but at costs."

The Doctor nods, "Your mental status – why you think it's perfectly alright to send a bunch of half-cured maniacs into a peaceful den of settlers to kidnap one woman. Because you think maybe, _just maybe_, she holds the answer in her very _ancient_ blood."

"She has Nano-bots," he squeals.

"The planet is TEEMING with them!" The Doctor shouts.

Samson nods, "But I can't extract them without something to activate them from a remote source and there's no power source powerful enough anymore." He looks to Clara, now breathing shallow and irregularly on the ground as Micah curls himself at her side, "And the planet doesn't have her antibodies. Antibodies we've destroyed in ourselves through cross breeding and inoculations. Antibodies that could help me destroy only part of the virus, leaving the perfect antidote to mortality."

"So you'd kill her?" The Doctor cries. "To create a race of immortal beings _for what_, revenge?" He watches the man nod, a smile creeping onto his face, "Domination," he understands. "You can't… re-write history."

"Oh, I can," he tells him. "I can shape history, rule over it…"

Turning, the Doctor shakes his head, "No, see, you're new to this – I've been around the universe and back again. It will correct itself. You'll set out on your domination and it will create a new chain of events that will delete you from history, or alter you, and you'll never have been sent back and you'll never do any of this." He waves a hand, "Or you'll eradicate the very virus you set out to destroy in your proper timeline and there will be nothing there for you to cure, nothing to be sent back for. Don't you understand?"

"Then at least there would be that – my lifetime, back the way it should have been."

"You won't succeed."

"I'm already immortal – fail or succeed, stop me or don't, Doctor, and I've still succeeded. I can wait out time, a billion years, and insert myself back into the proper timeline – alter events from there."

Taking a few steps towards Clara, he considers her, "And Clara?"

"Doesn't matter, she's as good as dead anyways," he tells him with a shrug. "Even if the virus doesn't take hold, the loss of blood will…"

"No," the Doctor replies quickly with a taut shake of his head.

He removes a small vial of Nano-bots from the left pocket of his pants and he adjusts his Sonic before dropping to her side and shaking out a quick layer over her injuries. He hesitates because he knows it's going to hurt without the anesthesia, but he can tell by the color of her skin that he can't wait any longer. He gives the Nano-bots a blast of energy and allows them to do what they're programmed to do, watching as the deep cuts bathed in a green glow from the Sonic slowly begin to swirl with activity and he grimaces because she screams.

Clara can feel the pain of each molecule of repair happening within her body, but after the initial shock she concentrates on the small boy draping himself over her protectively, holding her tightly to try and mask her from the torment she's experiencing. There's a familiar hand in hers as the fire in her upper torso starts to subside and she's able to take a long breath before looking up into the Doctor's face – now hopeful as he turns to Samson with a devious grin and new a flare in his eyes.

"You don't have anything powerful enough to collect the Nano-bots, but I do, and I'm quite keen on restoring your existing timeline, not enabling any kind of destruction," he gives the Sonic a toggle and then buzzes it over the open vial of Nano-bots. Immediately, the grey powdery substances begins to disappear as it floats into the air and rushes in an invisible wave back towards the Tardis.

"What are you doing?" Samson asks, taking a step towards them.

The Doctor taps the device in his ear and calls, "Oh, Dom?"

"Yes, Doctor?" The man replies quickly.

"Open the doors," he tells him lowly.

Clara sits up and cradles Micah, still feeling somewhat queasy from the loss of blood, and the Doctor helps her up, offering himself as a crutch to lean against. The boy slides to the ground, but his arms remain wrapped around her midsection as she nudges into the man at her side.

"Took you long enough," she allows weakly.

"Sorry, love," he tells her absently, "Bit of information I had to obtain first."

Clara shrugs and then looks up at him, "I assume, now that you have it, that everything will be just fine."

"Well," he grunts, "Almost fine."

"Almost fine?"

"I mean, I suppose if the Nano cloud currently rushing in our direction works the way that it should, it's taken the readings from your wounds, separated out the pure human from the wolf virus and has relayed that throughout the rest and they're going to work to destroy the wolf virus from every living being affected on this rock, hopefully even restoring those who've been fully converted back into humans." He ends with a flip of his Sonic, looking to Samson, who's rushing back to his laboratory.

"And if it doesn't work?" Clara questions. "What's the scenario for not working?"

He smiles, "The Nano cloud will be incapable of separating the two and we'll all be turned into mush in their attempt to extrapolate one set of genetics from the other."

"Oh!" Clara exclaims, eyes widening. "That sounds promising!"

"Might be best to chase after him," he points.

"Why?" Clara asks, "Shouldn't we maybe be getting indoors? Until we know if this worked?"

The Doctor has already started running, but he stops to turn and raise his hands, "One, he'd be moving in the direction of the _indoors_, and second…"

"He's mad!" Micah finishes loudly, unlatching and yanking Clara towards the Doctor.


	16. Course Correction

Clara feels as though they're running from an unseen enemy. She turns to look when she hears the wolves giving howls of pain and sees them writhing on the ground and eventually the half-turned men who'd been chasing them before, who'd scattered at the first sign of trouble, begin crying out. _At least they're not exploding_. It's the only positive thing she can think as she turns back to watch the Doctor come skidding to a stop at the edge of a tall spire of rock. If something had gone wrong, they'd be exploding. Except that wasn't necessarily true and she knew it.

_They could be melting_.

She watches him Sonic the structure until a patch shimmers slightly and reveals a door that he grins at before telling it, "Clever, cloaking mechanism. Elevator shaft," he scans up and down and smiles widely.

"We didn't come out of an elevator shaft," Clara tells him.

He looks to her, "I'm sure there's more than one way in and out. It's possible you never even entered the ship – he simply brought some equipment up into the caves that grew over his ship…"

"Just open it!" She hollers.

"You stopped for conver…"

She grabs the Sonic and points it at the door and presses the button. The door slips open and she pushes him inside the odd tubed structure that has scarcely room for the three of them before hitting a smudged option on the wall – a button she supposes is one that's been pressed the most over the years – and she sighs when the doors close. He holds out a hand, one eyebrow raised, amused look on his face, and she slaps the Sonic into it.

"Sorry, I just don't want to melt," she tells him.

They begin their descent and the Doctor assures her, "Clara, the Nano-bots will work. The same way they've worked on you, they're designed to do these things," he smiles, "Honestly, do you think I'd send a cloud of a billion of them over the face of the planet if I wasn't absolutely positive that they'd work?"

"You said…" she starts.

"You asked…" he interrupts.

Micah grunts and they glance down at him, making a face of disapproval up at them, just before the door slides open again and they're looking at a dimmed hallway. Clara feels the boy's hand in hers instantly and she holds him close to her as the Doctor steps out, glancing around before he silently tells her, "Besides, they're Nano-bots, they're already in the air, it's only a matter of time before they work their way down that shaft and into this space. We'll know when it happens," he tells her with a smile and look to Micah, who trembles slightly and shifts even closer to the woman at his side.

"Don't frighten him, he's just a child," Clara hisses.

"And he has a right to know what he's frightened of!" The Doctor tells her with an angry frown.

Micah goes limp and Clara falls with a small shout to catch him before he hits the ground, holding him like an infant in her arms. His eyes blink rapidly and his body is trembling slightly and she tries to wake him, terrified at what could happen to him. When she looks up at the Doctor, he seems mildly concerned, but smiles and nods at the boy who asks meekly, "Are the Nano-bots going to hurt me?"

Clara starts to answer before she glances down at him curiously. "Say again?"

He glances up at her and asks, "Are the Nano-bots going to hurt me, Clara?"

"No," she laughs, feeling warm tears of happiness come to her eyes as he grins up at her.

"See," the Doctor tells her plainly as she gives the boy's shoulder a rub.

The Doctor helps them both back on their feet, Clara fretting over Micah as he shakes his head at the duo. She's pushing hair out of the boy's face when the Doctor begins to walk down the hallway towards where there's a sudden clamor of metal on metal. When they reach the large laboratory room three doors down, Samson is looking down at his hands, at the tremors paralyzing them. The Doctor feels Clara and Micah come up behind him, but he keeps his eyes on the man who doesn't quite understand what's happened – what's happening – to him.

"What did you do?" Samson growls. His reddening eyes snap up to look at the Doctor with a ferocity that makes Micah let out a small gasp of surprise. "_What did you do_?"

"Putting everything right," the Doctor responds and he holds a hand out to his side to keep Clara and the boy from advancing any further. He knows what the Nano-bots are capable of, what they're deciphering within the genetics of the man standing before them, because he's written up the instructions, but he doesn't know what they'll do, or what the man will do before they finish.

Samson takes a staggered step forward and grimaces, "All I wanted to do was help," he gestures to Clara, "And she's fine, she's just fine – she could still help. I could do things your way, Doctor. Use the Nano-cloud, take it to the future with me and help."

The Doctor stares him down, watching as he begins to cry, but becomes unable to move. He swallows and utters a simple, "I'm sorry, Doctor Samson. I'm so very sorry."

"The people on this planet were going to crash anyways, I couldn't control that," he tells him.

"No, but you could control what happened to them," the Doctor reminds.

"Doctor," Clara utters quietly, hand touching the middle of his back, but he doesn't turn to look at her – he keeps his eyes on the mad man in front of him, slowly decomposing on the inside.

Samson gives a cough and blood sputters onto his lips, but he doesn't raise his hands to touch it. He smiles at the Doctor and tells him, "_You_ could have controlled _this_."

"No..."

"Yes!" Samson shouts. "You told the Nano-bots to do this, to revert instead of stabilize, but you would have given a timeline after which everything should be healed – a timeline that you've put me behind. To read the genetic code, the genetic age and revert me to what I should be." He looks to Clara, "You do understand what he's done; you understand that he's killed me. A judge wielding authority over an unmanned court, deciding who lives and who dies – the very thing I've been condemned for."

"And you expect me to help you?" Clara asks sternly, _vindictively_, before her eyes fall to the ground and she glances up at the Doctor, "Could it be reversed?"

The Doctor meets her eyes and toys with the Sonic. "Possibly," he grunts.

Clara watches the device in his hands, watches the pained expression on his face. She knows he doesn't want to and the idea frightens her – it frightens her more that she's considering maybe helping this man wouldn't be a good idea. She glances at Micah, standing a few feet away, eyes wide with fear, and she imagines that he doesn't understand what's happening… he's simply scared. Clara nods, "Then do it, reverse it, heal him as well."

His jaw clenches tightly and he looks up at the man who's smiling at him. "Do as she says, Doctor," Samson tells him with a nod. "You'll listen to her because she's the reason you made it this way. She's the reason you want _your_ revenge on me – because how dare I even _fathom_ taking her from you…"

Cutting him off, the Doctor calmly corrects, "I made it this way because you're a monster who has to be stopped."

Cocking his head, the other man responds, "Little pot and kettle here, aren't we, Doctor?"

Clara steps up beside him and she touches his hand, "Doctor, it doesn't matter what he wanted to do to me, what he did – what matters is we don't do the same. What matters is we're not him, we're better than him, and we'll help him." She waits until he looks back at her and she nods, grasping his hand in hers. Desperate for him not to slip past that point… and Clara is well aware of how dangerously close he comes.

He still hesitates and she can see the anger in his eyes and the frustration – how could she not understand how near she'd been to death at the hands of this man over his revenge. His eyes drift to her, to the bloodied dress that hangs tattered at her chest and she smiles reassuringly as he meets her gaze. With a twist of the Sonic, he changes the settings and raises it at Samson, opening it to amplify the signal and gives him a long buzz, eyes not leaving Clara's.

The man gives a shout and drops to the floor and Clara turns with a smile, because the Doctor would always be the better man, but Samson instantly dissolves into a puddle of flesh and she jumps back with a shout as it slowly crackles, drying to a layer of dust. She looks up instantly at the man at her side, watching as he looks to his Sonic, puzzled, before dropping his head and pinching the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb, telling her quietly,

"It was too late."

Clara turns away, towards Micah, who's staring in shock, and she goes to him, enveloping him in her arms to shield him from the gruesome scene behind her. Clara knows it's no use, what he's seen will be engraved in his mind for a long while, haunting him in his nightmares, but she tries anyways, hoping that somehow her kindness would help him through it as well.

"We should leave," she urges with a look back at the man who is still staring forward, wrought with guilt.

He spins on his heels and rushes back into the hallway, lifting the Sonic in the air to scan for what she presumes would be a computer system, as they already know how to get in and out of the ship. "You're going to correct the gravitational field," she supplies as she struggles to keep up.

The Doctor only half-grins as they enter a room that holds large machinery and glowing tubes he urges her to stay clear of and when he scans them, he frowns. He pops open a casing and looks through the glowing spaghetti-like wires, then turns and tries to give her a calm smile, but she shakes her head. She wants to shout at him because he was perfectly fine frightening a child, but he's withholding from her to try and keep her from knowing the peril they're in.

And it never works.

"Oh, everything is fine," he tells her, clasping his hands together around the Sonic.

Clara lays a hand on Micah's shoulder and she smiles up at him and declares, "That explains the proper terror in your eyes."

"Organic bio-mechanisms," he tells her with a laugh. "Some future ships are partly organic. Plant technology – everything above us is coursing with electronics on the inside, consider them the roots of this ship, stretching out into the universe for nutrients to power the vehicle."

"Planet plant ship," she nods, "Gotcha." Then she shrugs, "Should we be frightened of the plants?"

He shakes his head and lays his hands on her shoulders, giving her previously injured one a light rub of his thumb before allowing, "The majority of this planet is as old as Samson, and the rest of it would be recognized as being newly formed life that should be restored to a previous state."

"The Nano-cloud," Clara understands, then turns back, "The Nano-cloud!"

The Doctor hands slip off her shoulders and one lands in her open palm and he gives another petrified smile before telling her, "The planet will be turned to dust in less than a few minutes."


	17. The New Planet

He starts to break into a run, but she tugs him back and he feels a surge of panic because there's only so much time and he knows how far the Tardis is. The Doctor shouts, "Clara, we have to go!"

"No, we have to save the people!" She commands.

He bobs his head slightly, "We can't save the people if we don't go!"

"The people can only be saved from this ship!" Clara insists.

Micah looks back and forth between them, raising an eyebrow as the Doctor releases her hand and plants his on his waist, glaring at the woman with a look of frustration. "It's a fairly _large_ ship-planet. Inhabited by quite a few people who would need to be saved. Locating them is the first problem, some would be disoriented by the transformation back into humans, others would simply be disoriented because they are human and humans tend to disorient themselves in moments like this. Then I would have to get them to a centralized location – or a small set of centralized locations, which would require announcing to the planet what is happening, hoping there isn't a mass panic, and then getting them to actually group up in specific spots the Tardis can locate before the gravity pulse goes off, which is a possibility. That pulse, which shouldn't go off for a few hours, might go off early as a result of the Nano-cloud tinkering with the mechanisms of this planet. The whole planet could destabilize in the interim, sending us all jettisoning into space, which would be a more horrific way…"

Clara reaches up and grabs him by his vest and yanks him down to her height to tell him calmly, "You can control the Nano-cloud," then she adds, "Idiot."

"Control the Nano-cloud," he repeats.

"Tell the Nano-cloud to stop," she smiles.

He reaches up to cup her face in his hands and he kisses her, quickly straightening and moving around her to look at the control panel again. Micah giggles and Clara does the best she can to explain it away in her mind that he's simply excited that there's a way to save everyone, but she can't help the red that burns her cheeks when she turns and inches up next to him to watch him tinker away.

He glances sideways at her, grin ready on his lips as he tells her, "If I re-route the energy up into the trees instead of down into the ship, I can send out an EMP that's just strong enough to de-activate all of the Nano-bots, but not strong enough to take out this ship's navigational controls, and if I can do that. IF I can do that, I can stabilize the gravitational pull of the planet. If I can do that, the planet will continue to spin, the gravity keeping everything in place will continue to work and Clara Oswald, we will have saved the day."

"Again," she sighs.

"Yes," he smiles, "Again."

Micah hops happily at her side and she stops him with a laugh before he tells her, "It's like being super heroes! The Doctor and his sidekick, Clara… can I be the sidekick's sidekick?"

Lifting him up onto his hip quickly, and with a gleeful smile, the Doctor points to a button on the console and he tells the boy in a half whisper, "There's no real sidekick's _sidekick_, but you can be my _superhero in training._" He grins when Micah nods his approval, and then instructs, "Just press that button."

Clara laughs at the duo, glad for the first time in a day, and she watches as Micah carefully reaches forward, pokes at the small key on the board, and waits. They all wait, listening as the ship's hum changes. It energizes, buzzing and crackling in a way that both excites and petrifies her, but she looks at the Doctor, raising his eyes to the ceiling with Micah still held tight to him and she understands this is good. This is right.

And there's a light boom that resonates through her chest and flickers the lights around them. Clara can feel numbness that she reaches for, touching her flesh through the torn dress and the Doctor is at her side, telling her gently, "It's the Nano-bots inside of you de-activating. You might feel a bit sore in a moment as they've stopped working to repair your injuries – but it will be fine."

She smiles up at him, not realizing he'd stopped her from falling, and Micah is nodding excitedly down at her before the Doctor lets Micah slip to the ground so he can turn and reboot functions. He taps at the screen and begins typing feverishly as Clara holds the boy to keep him from interrupting and soon there's an odd sensation. A tickle in her stomach and she looks up at him as he turns and holds his hands out at either side of his body, looking for some sort of approval from her.

"A natural rotation of the planet, no more excess gravity wave beaming out into space daily," he explains. "Might feel funny for a bit – some might get sick," he adds, looking to the green color on Micah's face as he leans against Clara's hip and holds his hands to his stomach. "It will pass."

"Is the planet… I mean," Clara starts, "Is everyone alright?"

"Saved the day," he nods.

Micah vomits.

Raising a finger, the Doctor declares, "I'm going to check above," and leaves.

"Typical," Clara utters, sighing.

She tears at what's left of her leggings, using it to wipe at the boy's face, and it occurs to her, suddenly, that he has no parents. Smiling up at him, she watches him give her a small grin of appreciation in return. His bright eyes are sleepy and when she stops, tossing the bit of cloth aside, he bends forward to hug her around the neck, laying his head at her shoulder. Clara wraps an arm around him and stands, feeling his legs loop and lock behind her and she laughs quietly, rubbing at his back.

"Long night," she agrees.

She moves down the hall and into the elevator that takes her back to the surface where the Doctor is scanning the air and nodding, pointing about and muttering to himself. He swings around when he hears the door slide open and he stops, looking at her with Micah, taking in the bare legs and her mangled and exhausted appearance and he chances a laugh at her expense, but also with relief that she's still there to look at him as though she were about to collapse.

He gestures out into the forest, "Everything's in working order."

"Where is the Tardis?" Clara asks, hands shifting to clasp together underneath Micah, who seems to have dozed off in the short trip out.

Pointing, the Doctor allows, "Not far."

She nods and they begin to walk, side by side, through the trees. It's a wonder, Clara thinks, what just a day will do. She can see a few people lying about, some trying to work out what's happened to them with others, but most merely sitting in silent contemplation. She understands the feeling. She'd like to sit in a tub of hot water gazing off into the space in front of her. She'd also like a hot fudge sundae and some chips.

"The boy, his parents…" the Doctor starts, but Clara shakes her head.

"They're gone," she tells him quietly, turning to watch his smile fade as his head drops.

Glancing up with a nod, he assures her, "I'm sure we can talk to Dom, to the others – there will be a lot of people here who need help re-adjusting to life. They can help them."

Clara presses a light kiss to the back of sleeping boy's neck. "Oh, I know."

"Motherhood does suite you," he tells her fondly.

Suppressing a laugh, Clara teases, "I'd quite like to be married first, Doctor."

He smiles, watching as she shakes her head and continues on through the forest until they've reached the blue box that sits patiently next to a mound of dirt from its landing, and the Doctor pulls open the door for her, smiling at Dom as he straightens at the console, looking over Clara and Micah with wide eyes. And then he smiles, "So you did it," Dom says proudly as Clara walks by him and makes her way towards the interior of the Tardis with the boy. "Saved us all," he waits until the Doctor comes to stand beside him to nudge him, "Even the not-wife."

Toggling the switches, he takes Dom's hand and places it on a handle and raises his eyebrows, "Hold tight, we're taking the shortcut."

The man starts to utter a question in confusion, but the Tardis engines kick in and the console shakes, then bobs about as they shift over the planet's surface towards the cave. "We just travel in time?" Dom asks brightly.

With a shrug and a sideways nod of his head, the Doctor tells him plainly, "Just space."

"We could go back in time though, fix all of this."

He smiles, "Doesn't work that way, but you and your group can help." He moves with him towards the front doors and pushes them open, stepping outside to the space in front of the cave, "There won't be another gravity pulse, which is for the best, but your ship won't take off," raising a finger, he offers, "I can take a group, a fairly large group, to Quatar and you can arrange a rescue mission while those left behind gather the survivors."

Dom nods quickly, "Then we can blow this rock out of the sky."

The Doctor smiles, "After everyone has been evacuated – I don't see why not. Of course, it is still a planet, still full of life that's come over the years with crashes. It might be best to leave it be."

With a small a laugh and a slight nod, Dom moves out towards the cave to share the good news, leaving the Doctor standing at the open doors. He drops to his left, leaning against the frame and smiling up at the sky before he feels a familiar presence at his side and he glances over to see Clara grinning up him. She gives him a small poke in the ribs with her elbow and he pushes off the Tardis, wrapping an arm over her shoulders to pull her closer to him.

For a moment he just lets the knowledge of her safety settle on his mind and he's content when her left arm comes up around his back and she sighs. "The boy asleep? He asks her.

"Out cold," then she pouts, "I was going to try to give him a bath, maybe a haircut – that hair!"

He flips his own out of his eyes and she glances up playfully flicking his hair with her free hand. "You're not," he tells her as she laughs, hand dropping down to her chest to touch the spot that twinges with pain. "You alright?"

"Yeah," she allows lightly, looking out to see the commotion of happiness spilling out from the cave and she watches the children who emerge slowly, eyes squinting in sunlight they've probably rarely seen. She looks up at the Doctor and sees the satisfied smugness on his face and she bites her top lip before telling him, "Doctor, ask me again."

"Ask you what?" He questions, glancing down at her smirk. "What?"

Reaching up to give his stomach a small tap of her palm, she moves away from him towards the console and she shrugs, "After we've dropped off these people, made sure all is well…" She looks back at him.

He nods, walking towards her, "We'll see that setting sun."

"Let's get married," Clara declares, "Go see that planet of _yours_."

The Doctor shakes his head as he comes to stand next to her. "We'll see _your_ sunset."

Smiling, she nods, "Let's see _our_ sunset."

End


End file.
